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A TASTE OF TENURE

BY GORDON R. DICKSON

SCIENCE FICTION.

JULY 1961 • 35 CENTS

It s good to be a boy, exploring the
wide world, soaking up wonderful
new sounds and sights everywhere
you go. And if the world’s a peaceful
place, it’s good to grow up, too, and
become a man.

But will the world stay peaceful?
That depends on whether we can keep
the peace. Peace costs money.

Money for military strength and

for science. And money saved by
individuals to help keep our economy
strong.

Your Savings Bonds make you a
Partner in strengthening America’s
Peace Power.

The Bonds you buy will earn good
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Are you buying enough?

HELP STRENGTHEN AMERICA’S PEACE POWER

BUY U. S. SAVINGS BONDS

The U.S. Government do* - not pay for this advertising. The Treasury Department thanks
The Advertising Council and this magazine for their patriotic donation.

•oc

THERE are some things that cannot
be generally told — things you ought to
know. Great truths are dangerous to
some — but factors for personal power
and accomplishment in the hands of
those who understand them. Behind
the tales of the miracles and mysteries
of the ancients, lie centuries of their
secret probing into nature’s laws —
their amazing discoveries of the hid -
den processes of man's mindt and the
mastery of life's problems. Once shroud-
ed in mystery to avoid their destruc-
tion by mass fear and ignorance, these
facts remain a useful heritage for the
thousands of men and women who pri-
vately use them in their homes today.

THIS FREE BOOK

The Rosicrucians (not a religious

organization) an age-old brotherhood
of learning, have preserved this secret
wisdom in their archives for centu-
ries. They now invite you to share the
practical helpfulness of their teachings.
Write today for a free copy of the
book, "The Mastery of Life.” Within
its pages may lie a new life of oppor-
tunity for you. Address: Scribe L.D.L.

SEND THIS COUPON *

[ Scribe L-D.L.

! The ROSICRUCIANS (AMORO
i San Jose, California

j Please send me the free book yThe Mastery J
i of Lifef which explains how I may learn to j
i use my faculties and powers of mind.

| Name i

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UJTe Rosicrucians (AMORC)

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA, U.SA.

JULY 1961

worlds

Voh 11, Number 3

All Stones New
and Complete

science

fiction

Robert M. Guinn, Publisher 0 H. L. Gold, Editor
Sam Ruvidich, Art Director £ Frederik Pohl, Managing Editor
Theodore Sturgeon, Feature Editor

NOVELETTES

The Planet With No Nightmare by Jim Harmon 6
The Stainless-Steel Knight by John Rackham 39
A Taste of Tenure by Gordon R . Dickson S3
The Junkmakers by Albert R. Teichner 109

SHORT STORIES

The Real Hard Sell by William W. Stuart 25
Doormat World by J. T . McIntosh 68

SPECIAL FEATURES
Kangaroo Quiz 66

The Bern Called Windigo by Theodore Sturgeon 81

DEPARTMENTS
IFun 67

Science Briefs 107
Hue and Cry 130

COVER by Dember : “Operation Overlook*

Next issue ( September ) on sale July 14th

IF is published bi-monthly by Digest Productions Corporation, VoL 11, No. S. Main Of-
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$8.00 in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South and Central America and U. 8. pos-
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additional mailing offices. Copyright by Digest Productions Corporation, 1901. All rights
including translations reserved. All material submitted must be accompanied by self-
addressed, stamped envelopes. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited
material. All stories printed in this magazine are fiction, and any similarity between
characters and actual persons is coincidental. Printed An the U. S. A. by the Guinn
Company, Inc., New York 14, N. Y

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BY JIM HARMON

Illustrated by Wood

3UWUH3IN

The creatures on
the little planet
were real bafflers.
The first puzzler
about them was that
they died so easily.
The second was that
they didn't die at all.

TENSION eased away as
the spaceship settled
down on its metallic haunch-
es and they savored a safe
planetfall.

Ekstrohm fingered loose
the cinches of his decelera-
tion couch. He sighed. An
exploration camp would mean
things would be simpler for
him. He could hide his prob-
lem from the others more eas-
ily. Trying to keep secret
what he did alone at night

was very difficult under the
close conditions on board a
ship in space.

Ryan hefted his bulk up
and supported it on one el-
bow. He rubbed his eyes
sleepily with one huge paw.
“Ekstrohm, Nogol, you guys
okay?”

“Nothing wrong with me
that couldn’t be cured,” No-
gol said. He didn’t say what
would cure him; he had been
explaining all during the trip
what he needed to make him
feel like himself. His small
black eyes darted inside the
olive oval of his face.

“Ekstrohm?” Ryan insist-
ed.

“Okay.”

“Well, let’s take a ground-
level look at the country
around here.”

The facsiport rolled open
on the landscape. A range
of bluffs hugged the horizon,
the color of decaying moss.
Above them, the sky was the
black of space, or the almost
equal black of the winter sky
above Minneapolis, seen
against neon-lit snow. That
cold, empty sky was full of
fire and light. It seemed al-
most a magnification of the
Galaxy itself, of the Milky
Way, blown up by some mas-
ter photographer.

This fiery swath was ac-
tually only a belt of minor
planets, almost like the aste-
roid belt in the original So-
lar System. These planets
were much bigger, nearly all

capable of holding an at-
mosphere. But to the infuri-
ation of scientists, for no
known reason not all of them
did. This would be the fifth
mapping expedition to the
planetoids of Yancy-6 in
three generations. They lay
months away from the near-
est Earth star by jump drive,
and no one knew what they
were good for, although it
was felt that they would
probably be good for some-
thing if it could only be dis-
covered— much like the con-
tinent of Antarctica in an-
cient history.

“How can a planet with so
many neighbors be so lone-
ly?” Ryan asked. He was the
captain, so he could ask ques-
tions like that.

“Some can be lonely in a
crowd,” Nogol said elaborat-
ely.

66 \V THAT will we need out-

W side, Ryan?” Ek-
strohm asked.

“No helmets,” the captain
answered. “We can breathe
out there, all right. It just
won’t be easy. This old world
lost all of its helium and
trace gases long ago. Nitro-
gen and oxygen are about it.”

“Ryan, look over there,”
Nogol said. “Animals. Ring-
ing the ship. Think they’re in-
telligent, maybe hostile?”

“I think they’re dead,” Ek-
strohm interjected quietly.
“I get no readings from them
at all. Sonic, electronic, gal-

THE PLANET WITH NO NIGHTMARE

vanic — all blank. According
to these needles, they’re stone
dead.”

“Ekstrohm, you and I will
have a look,” Ryan said. “You
hold down the fort, Nogol.
Take it easy.”

“Easy,” Nogol confirmed.
“I heard a story once about
a rookie who got excited when
the captain stepped outside
and he couldn’t get an en-
cephalographic reading on
him. Me, I know the mind of
an officer works in a strange
and unfathomable manner.”
“I’m not worried about
you mis-reading the dials, No-
gol, just about a lug like you
reading them at all. Remem-
ber, when the little hand is
straight up that’s negative.
Positive results start when it
goes towards the hand you
use to make your mark.”
“But I’m ambidextrous.”
Ryan told him what he
could do then.

Ekstrohm smiled, and fol-
lowed the captain through the
airlock with only a glance at
the lapel gauge on his cover-
all. The strong negative
field his suit set up would
help to repel bacteria and in-
sects.

Actually, the types of in-
fection that could attack a
warm-blooded mammal were
not infinite, and over the
course of the last few hun-
dred years adequate defenses
had been found for all basic
categories. He wasn’t likely
to come down with hot chills

and puzzling striped fever.

They ignored the ladder
down to the planet surface
and, with only a glance at
the seismological gauge to
judge surface resistance,
dropped to the ground.

It was day, but in the thin
atmosphere contrasts were
sharp between light and sha-
dow. They walked from mid-
night to noon, noon to mid-
night, and came to the beast
sprawled on its side.

Ekstrohm nudged it with a
boot. “Hey, this is pretty
close to a wart-hog.”

“Uh-huh,” Ryan admitted.
“One of the best matches I’ve
ever found. Well, it has to
happen. Statistical average
and all. Still, it sometimes
gives you a creepy feeling to
find a rabbit or a snapping
turtle on some strange world.
It makes you wonder if this
exploration business isn’t all
some big joke, and somebody
has been everywhere before
you even started.”

THE surveyor looked side-
wise at the captain. The
big man seldom gave out with
such thoughts. Ekstrohm
cleared his throat. “What
shall we do with this one?
Dissect it?”

Ryan nudged it with his
toe, following Ekstrohm’s ex-
ample. “I don’t know, Stor-
my. It sure as hell doesn’t
look like any dominant intel-
ligent species to me. No
hands, for one thing. Of

JIM HARMON

course, that’s not definite
proof.”

“No, it isn’t,” Ekstrohm
said.

“I think we’d better let it
lay until we get a clearer pic-
ture of the ecological setup
around here. In the mean-
time, we might be thinking
on the problem all these dead
beasts represent. What kill-
ed them?”

“It looks like we did, when
we made blastdown.”

“But what about our land-
ing was lethal to the crea-
tures?”

“Radiation?” Ekstrohm
suggested. “The planet is
very low in radiation from
mineral deposits, and the at-
mosphere seems to shield out
most of the solar output. Any
little dose of radiation might
knock off these critters.”

“I don’t know about that.
Maybe it would work the
other way. Maybe because
they have had virtually no
radioactive exposure and don’t
have any R’s stored up they
could take a lot without
harm.”

“Then maybe it was the
shockwave we set up. Or may-
be it’s sheer xenophobia. They
curl up and die at the sight
of something strange and
alien — like a (spaceship.”

“Maybe,” the captain ad-
mitted. “At this stage of the
game anything could be pos-
sible. But there’s one possi-
bility I particularly don’t
like.”

“And that is?”

“Suppose it was not us that
killed these aliens. Suppose
it is something right on the
planet, native to it. I just
hope it doesn’t work ort
Earthmen too. These critters
went real sudden.”

Ekstrohm lay in his

bunk and thought, the
camp is quiet.

The Earthmen made camp
outside the spaceship. There
was no reason to leave the
comfortable quarters inside
the ship, except that, faced
with a possibility of sleeping
on solid ground, they simply,
had to get out.

The c^mp was a cluster of
aluminum bubbles, ringed
with a spy web to alert the
Earthmen to the approach of
any being.

Each manjiad a bubble to
himself, privacy after the
long period of enforced inti-
macy on board the ship.

Ekstrohm lay in his bunk
and listened to the sounds of
the night on Yancy-6 138.
There was a keening of wind,
and a cracking of the frozeii
ground. Insects there were
on the world, but they were
frozen solid during the night,
only to revive and thaw in
the morning sun..

The bunk he lay on was
much more uncomfortable
than the acceleration couches
on board. Yet he knew the
others were sleeping more
soundly, now that they had

THE PLANET WITH NO NIGHTMARE

renewed their contact with
the matter that had birthed
them to send them riding
high vacuum.

Ekstrohm was not asleep.

Now there could be an end
to pretending.

He threw off the light
blanket and swung his feet
off the bunk, to the floor. Ek-
strohm stood up.

There was no longer any
need to hide. But what was
there to do? What had chang-
ed for him?

He no longer had to lie in
his bunk all night, his eyes
closed, pretending to sleep.
In privacy he could walk
around, leave the light on,
read.

It was small comfort for in-
somnia.

Ekstrohm never slept. Some
doctors had informed him he
was mistaken about this. Ac-
tually, they said, he did sleep,
but so shortly and fitfully
that he forgot. Others ad-
mitted he was absolutely cor-
rect — he never slept. His
body processes only slowed
down enough for him to dis-
pell fatigue poisons. Occa-
sionally he fell into a waking,
gritty-eyed stupor ; but he
never slept.

Never at all.

Naturally, he couldn’t let
his shipmates know this. In-
somnia would ground him
from the Exploration Service,
on physiological if not psy-
chological grounds. He had to
hide it.

OVER the years, he had
had buddies in space in
whom he thought he could
confide. The buddies invari-
ably took advantage of him.
Since he couldn’t sleep any-
way, he might as well stand
their watches for them or
write their reports. Where
the hell did he get off threat-
ening to report any laxness
on their part to the captain?
A man with insomnia had bet-
ter avoid bad dreams of that
kind if he knew what was
good for him.

Ekstrohm had to hide his
secret.

In a camp, instead of ship-
board, hiding the secret was
easier. But the secret itself
was just as hard.

Ekstrohm picked up a
lightweight no-back from the
ship’s library, a book by
Bloch, the famous twentieth
century expert on sex. He
scanned a few lines on the
social repercussions of a cel-
ebrated nineteenth century
sex murderer, but he couldn’t
seem to concentrate on the
weighty, pontifical, ponderous
style.

On impulse, he flipped up
the heat control on his cover-
all and slid back the hatch of
the bubble.

Ekstrohm walked through
the alien glass and looked up
at the unfamiliar constella-
tions, smelling the frozen
sterility of the thin air.

Behind him, his mates stir-
red without waking.

JIM HARMON

H “Listen, Ekstrohm, I want

to give you the benefit of

EKSTROHM was startled every doubt. But you aren’t
in the morning by a bang- exactly the model of a sur-
ing on the hatch of his bub- veyor, you know. You’ve been
ble. It took him a few sec- riding on a pink ticket for six
onds to put his thoughts in years, you know that.”
order, and then he got up “No,” Ekstrohm said, “No,
from the bunk where he had I didn’t know that.”
been resting, sleeplessly. “You’ve been hiding things

The angry burnt-red face from me and Nogol every
of Ryan greeted him. “Okay, jump we’ve made with you.
Stormy, this isn’t the place Now comes this! It fits the
for fun and games. What did pattern of secrecy and stealth
you do with them?” you’ve been involved in.”

“Do with what?” “What could I do with your

“The dead beasties. All the lousy dead bodies? What
dead animals laying around' would I want with them?”
the ship.” “All I know is that you

“What are you talking were outside the bubbles last
about, Ryan? What do you night, and you were the on-
think I did with them?” ly sentient being who came in

“I don’t know. All I know or out of our alarm web. The
is that they are gone.” tapes show that. Now all the

“Gone?” bodies are missing, like they

Ekstrohm shouldered his got up and walked away.”
way outside and scanned the It was not a new experi-
veldt. ence to Ekstrohm. No. Sus-

There was no ring of ani- picion wasn’t new to him at
mal corpses. Nothing. Noth- all.

ing but wispy grass whipping “Ryan, there are other ex-
in the keen breeze. planations for the disappear-

“I’ll be damned,” Ek- ance of the bodies. Look for
strohm said. them, will you? I give you

“You are right now, buddy, my word I’m not trying to
ExPe doesn’t like anybody pull some stupid kind of joke,
mucking up primary evi- or to deliberately foul up the
dence.” expedition. Take my word,

“Where do you get off, can’t you?”

Ryan?” Ekstrohm demand- Ryan shook his head. “I
ed. “Why pick me for your don’t think I can. There’s
patsy? This has got to be still such a thing as mental
some kind of local phenome- illness. You may not be re-
non. Why accuse a shipmate sponsible.”
of being behind this?” Ekstrohm scowled.

THE PLANET WITH NO NIGHTMARE

“Don’t try anything vio-
lent, Stormy. I outweigh you
fifty pounds and I’m fast for
a big man.”

“L wasn’t planning on
jumping you. Why do you
have to jump me the first
time something goes wrong?
You’ve only got a lot of form-
less suspicions.” r
“Look, Ekstrohm, do you
think I looked out the door
and saw a lot of dead animals
missing and immediately de-
cided you did it to bedevil
me? I’ve been up for hours —
thinking — looking into this.
You’re the only possibility
that’s left.”

“Why?”

W^piIE bodies are missing.

A What could it be? Sca-
vengers? The web gives us a
complete census on every-
thing inside it. The only ani-
mals inside the ring are more
wart-hogs and despite their
appearance, they aren’t car-
nivorous. Strictly grass-eat-
ers. Besides, no animal, no in-
sect, no process of decay
could completely consume ani-
mals without a trace. There
are no bones, no hide, no
nothing.”

“You don’t know the way
bacteria works on this planet.
Radiation is so low, it may
be particularly virulent.”
“That’s a possible explana-
tion, although it runs counter
to all the evidence we’ve es-
tablished so far. There’s a
much simpler explanation,

Ekstrohm. You. You hid the
bodies for some reason. What
other reason could you have
for prowling around out here
at night?”

I couldn't sleep. The words
were in his throat, but he
didn’t use them. They weren’t
an explanation. They would
open more questions than
they would answer.

“You’re closing your eyes
to the possibility of natural
phenomenon, laying this 1 op
me. You haven’t adequate
proof and you know it.”

“Ekstrohm, when some-
thing’s stolen, you always sus-
pect a suspicious character
before you get around to the
possibility that the stolen
goods melted into thin air.”

“What,” Ekstrohm said
with deadly patience, “what
do you think I could have
possibly done with your preci-
ous dead bodies?”

“You could have buried
them. This is a big territory.
We haven’t been able to
search every square foot of
it.”

“Ryan, it was thirty or for-
ty below zero last night. How
the devil could I dig holes in
this ground to bury any-
thing?”

“At forty below, how could
your bacteria function to rot
them away?”

Ekstrohm could see he was
facing prejudice. There was
no need to keep talking, apd
no use in it. Still, some re-
flex made him continue to

JIM HARMON

frame reasonable answers.

“I don’t know what bac-
teria on this planet can do.
Besides, that was only one ex-
ample of a natural phenome-
non.”

“Look, Ekstrohm, you don’t
have anything to worry about
if you’re not responsible.
We’re going to give you a
fair test.”

What kind of a test would
it be? He wondered. And
how fair?

Nogol came trotting up
lightly.

“Ryan, I found some more
wart-hogs and they keeled
over as soon as they saw me.”

“So it was xenophobia,”
Ekstrohm ventured.

“The important thing,”
Ryan said, with a sidelong
glance at the surveyor, “is
that now we’ve got what it
takes to see if Ekstrohm has
been deliberately sabotaging
this expedition.”

THE body heat of the three
men caused the air-con-
ditioner of the tiny bubble to
labor.

“Okay,” Ryan breathed.
“We’ve got our eyes on you,
Ekstrohm, and the video cir-
cuits are wide open on the
dead beasts. All we have to
do is wait.”

“We’ll have a long wait,”
Nogol ventured. “With Ek-
strohm here, and the corpses
out there, nothing is going to
happen.”

That would be all the proof

they needed, Ekstrohm knew.
Negative results would be
positive proof to them. His
pink ticket would turn pure
red and he would be grounded
for life — if he got off without
a rehabilitation sentence.

But if nothing happened,
it wouldn’t really prove any-
thing. There was no way to
say that the conditions to-
night were identical to the
conditions the previous night.
What had swept away those
bodies might be comparable
to a flash flood. Something
that occurred once a year, or
once in a century.

And perhaps his presence
outside was required in some
subtle cause-and-effect rela-
tionship.

All this test would prove,
if the bodies didn’t disappear,
was only that conditions were
not identical to conditions un-
der which they did disappear.

Ryan and Nogol were pre-
pared to accept him, Ek-
strohm, as the missing ele-
ment, the one ingredient
needed to vanish the corpses.
But it could very well be
something else.

Only Ekstrohm knew that
it had to be something else
that caused the disappear-
ances.

Or did it?

He faced up to the ques-
tion. How did he know he
was sane? How could hexbe
sure that he hadn’t stolen
and hid the bodies for some
murky reason of his own?

THE PLANET WITH NO NIGHTMARE

There was a large question as
to how long a man could go
without sleep, dreams and ob-
livion, and remain sane,

Ekstrohm forced his mind
to consider the possibility.
Could he remember every step
he had taken the night be-
fore?

It seemed to him that he
could remember walking past
the creature lying in the
grass, then walking in a cir-
cle, and coming back to the
base. It seemed like that to
him. But how could he know
that it was true?

He couldn’t.

THERE was no way he
could prove, even to him-
self, that he had not dispos-
ed of those alien remains
and then come back to his
bubble, contented and happy
at the thought* of fooling
those smug idiots who could
sleep at night.

“How much longer do we
have to wait?” Nogol asked.
“We’ve been here nine hours.
Half a day. The bodies are
right where I left them out-
side. There doesn’t seem to
be any more question.”

Ekstrohm frowned. There
was one question. He was
sure there was one question
. . . Oh, yes. The question
was: How did he know he
was sane?

He didn’t know, of course.
That was as good an answer
as any. Might as well accept
it; might as well let them do

what they wanted with him.
Maybe if he just gave up,
gave in, maybe he could sleep
then. Maybe he could. . .

Ekstrohm sat upright in
his chair.

No. That wasn’t the an-
swer. He couldn’t know that
he was sane, but then neither
could anybody else. The point
was, you had to go ahead liv-
ing as if you were sane. That
was the only way of living.

“Cosmos,” Ryan gasped.
“Would you look at that!”

Ekstrohm followed the
staring gaze of the two men.

On the video grid, one of
the “dead” animals was slow-
ly rising, getting up, walking
away.

“A natural phenomenon !”
Ekstrohm said.

“Suspended animation !”
Nogol ventured.

“Playing possum!” Ryan
concluded.

Now came the time for
apologies.

Ekstrohm had been
through similar situations be-
fore, ever since he had been
found walking the corridors
at college the night one of the
girls had been attacked. He
didn’t want to hear their apo-
logies ; they meant nothing to
him. It was not a matter of
forgiving them. He knew the
situation had not changed.

They would suspect him
just as quickly a second time.

“We’re supposed to be an
exploration team,” Ekstrohm
said quickly. “Let’s get down

JIM HARMON

to business. Why do you sup-
pose these alien creatures
fake death?”

Nogol shrugged his wiry
shoulders. “Playing dead is
easier than fighting.”

“More likely it’s a method
of fighting,” Ryan suggested.
“They play dead until they
see an opening. The n —
ripppp.”

“I think they’re trying to
hide some secret,” Ekstrohm
said.

“What secret?” Ryan de-
manded.

“I don't know,” he answer-
ed. “Maybe I’d better — sleep
on it.”

Ill

RYAN observed his two
crewmen confidently the
next morning. “I did some
thinking last night.”

Great, Ekstrohm thought.
For that you should get a Ha-
zardous Duty bonus.

“This business is pretty
simple,” the captain went on,
“these pigs simply play pos-
sum. They go into a state of
suspended animation, when
faced by a strange situation.
Xenophobia ! I don’t see
there’s much more to it.”
“Well, if you don’t see that
there’s more to it, Ryan — ”
Nogol began complacently.

“Wait a minute,” Ekstrohm
interjected. “That’s a good
theory. It may even be the
correct one, but where’s your
proof?”

“Look, Stormy, we don’t
have to have proof. Hell, we
don’t even have to have theo-
ries. We’re explorers. We
just make reports of primary
evidence and let the scientists
back home in the System fig-
ure them out.”

“I want this thing cleared
up, Ryan. Yesterday, you
were accusing me of being
some kind of psycho who was
lousing up the expedition out
of pure — pure — ” he searched
for a term currently in use in
mentology — “demonia. May-
be the boys back home will
think the same thing. I want
to be cleared.”

“I guess you were cleared
last night, Stormy boy,” No-
gol put in. “We saw one of
the ‘dead’ pigs get up and
walk away.”

‘‘That didn’t clear me,” Ek-
strohm said.

The other two looked like
they had caught him clean-
ing wax out of his ear in pub-
lic.

“No,” Ekstrohm went on.
“We still have no proof of
what caused the suspended
animation of the pigs. What-
ever caused it before caused
it last night. You thought of
accusing me, but you didn’t
think it through about how I
could have disposed of the
bodies. Or, after you found
out about the psuedo-death,
how I might have caused that.
If I had some drug or some-
thing to cause it the first time,
I could have a smaller dose,

JIM HARMON

or a slowly dissolving capsule
for delayed effect.”

The two men stared at him,
their eyes beginning to nar-
row.

4<I could have done that. Or
either of you could, have done
the same thing”

“Me?” N o g o 1 protested.
“Where would my profit be
in that?”

“You both have an admit-
ted motive. You hate my guts.
I’m ‘strange,’ ‘different,’ ‘sus-
picious.’ You could be trying
to frame me.”

“That’s insubordination,”
Ryan grated. “Accusations
against a superior officer. . .”
“Come off it, Ryan,” Nogol
sighed. “I never saw a three-
man spaceship that was run
very taut. Besides, he’s
right.”

Beet-juice flowed out of
Ryan’s swollen face. “So
where does that leave us?”
“Looking for proof of the
cause of the pig’s pseudo-
death. Remember, I’ll have
to make counter-accusations
against you two out of self-
defense.”

“Be reasonable. Stormy,”
Ryan pleaded. “This might
be some deep scientific mys-
tery we could never discover
in our lifetime. We might
never get off this planet”
That was probably behind
his thinking all along, why he
had been so quick to find a
scapegoat to explain it all
away. Explorers didn’t have
to have all the answers, or

even theories. But, if they
ever wanted to get anyplace
in the Service, they damned
well better.

“So what?” Ekstrohm ask-
ed. “The Service rates us as
expendable, doesn’t it?”

BY Ekstrohm’s suggestion,
they divided the work.
Nogol killed pigs. All day
he did nothing but scare the
wart-hogs to death by com-
ing near them.

Ryan ran as faithful a
check on the corpses as he
could, both by eyeball obsei*-
vation and by radar, video and
Pro-Tect circuits. They lack-
ed the equipment to program
every corpse for every sec-
ond, but a representative job
could be done.

Finally, Ekstrohm went
scouting for Something Else.
He didn’t know what he ex-
pected to find, but he some-
how knew he would find some-
thing.

He rode the traction-scoot-
er (so-called because it had no
traction at all — no wheels, no
slides, no contact with the
ground or air) and he reflect-
ed that he was a suspicious
character.

All through life, he was go-
ing around suspecting every-
body and now everything of
having some dark secret they
were trying to hide.

A simple case of transfer-
ence, he diagnosed, in long-
discredited terminology. He
had something to hide — his

THE PLANET WITH NO NIGHTMARE

insomnia. So he th. r'\
everybody else had their gau-
ty secret too.

How could there be any
deep secret to the pseudo-
death on this world? It was
no doubt a simple fear reac-
tion, a retreat from a terri-
fying reality. How could he
ever prove that it was more?
Or even exactly that?

Internal glandular actions
would be too subtle for a
team of explorers to estab-
lish. They could only go on
behavior. What more in the
way of behavior could he
really hope to establish? The
pattern was clear. The pigs
keeled over at any unfamiliar
sight or sound, and recovered
when they thought the coast
was clear. That was it. All
there was! Why did he stub-
bornly, stupidly insist there
was more to it?

Actually, by his insistence,
he was giving weight to the
idea of the others that he was
strange and suspicious him-
self. Under the normal, sane
conditions of planetfall the
phobias and preoccupations
of a space crew, nurtured in
the close confines of a scout
ship, wouldn’t be taken seri-
ously by competent men. But
hadn’t his subsequent beha-
vior given weight to Ryan’s
unfounded accusations of ir-
rational sabotage? Wouldn’t
it seem that he was actually
daring the others to prove his
guilt? If he went on with un-
orthodox behavior —

That was when Ekstrohm
saw the flying whale.

TENSION gripped Ekstro-
hm tighter than he grip-
ped the handlebars of his
scooter. He was only vaguely
aware of the passing scenery.
He knew he should switch on
the homing beacon and ride in
on automatic, but it seemed
like too much of an effort to
flick his finger. As the tension
rose, the capillaries of his eyes
swelled, and things began to
white out for him. The rush
of landscape became blurred
streaks of light and dark,
now mostly faceless light.

The flying whale. He had
seen it.

Moreover, he had heard it,
smelt and felt it. It had re-
leased a jet of air with a
distinctive sound and odor. It
had blown against his skin,
ruffled his hair. It had been
real.

But the flying whale
couldn’t have been real. Con-
ditions on this planetoid were
impossible for it. He knew
planets and their life possi-
bilities. A creature with a
skeleton like that could have
evolved here, but the atmos-
phere would never have sup-
ported his flesh and hide. Wa-
ter bodies were of insufficient
size. No, the whale was not
native to this world.

Then what, if anything, did
this flying alien behemoth
have to do with tile pseudo-

JIM HARMON

death of the local pig crea-
tures?

I’ll never know, Ekstrohm
told himself. Never. Ryan
and Nogol will never believe
me, they will never believe in
the flying whale. They’re ex-
plorers, simple men of action,
unimaginative. Of course,
I’m an explorer too. But I’m
different, I’m sensitive —

Ekstrohm was riding for a
fall.

The traction-scooter was
going up a slope that had
been eroded concave. It was
at the very top of the half-
moon angle, upside down,
standing Ekstrohm on his
head. Since he was not strap-
ped into his seat, he fell.

As he fell he thought rue-
fully that he had contrived to
have an accident in the only
way possible with a traction-
scooter.

Ekstrohm’s cranium collid-
ed with the ground, and he
stopped thinking. . . .

EKSTROHM blinked open
his eyes, wondering. He
saw light, then sky, then pigs.
Live pigs.

But — the pigs shouldn’t be
alive. When he was this
close they should be dead.
Only they weren’t.

Why. . . why. . .

He moved slightly and the
nearest pig fell dead. The
others went on with their
business, roaming the plain.
Ekstrohm expected the droo-
ping of the pig to stampede

the rest into dropping dead,
but they didn’t seem to pay
any attention to their fallen
member.

I’ve been lying here for
hours, he realized. I didn’t
move in on them. The pigs
moved in on me while I was
lying still. If I keep still I
can get a close look at them in
action.

So far, even with video, it
had been difficult to get much
of an idea of the way these
creatures lived — when they
weren’t dead.

Observe, observe, he told
himself.

There might be some rela-
tionship between the flying
whale and the pigs.

Could it be the whales were
intelligent alien masters of
these herds of pigs?

Ekstrohm lay still and ob-
served.

Item : the pigs ate the soft,
mosslike grass.

Item: the pigs eliminated
almost constantly.

Item : the pigs fought regu-
larlv.

Fought?

Here was something, Ek-
strohm realized.

Why did animals fight?

Rationalizations of nature-
lovers aside, some fought be-
cause they had plain mean
nasty dispositions — like some
people. That didn’t fit the
pigs. Thev were indolent
grazers. They hadn’t the
energy left over for sheer-cus-

THE PLANET WITH NO NIGHTMARE

sedness. There had to be a
definite goal to their battles.

It wasn’t food. That was
abundant. The grassy veldt
reached to all horizons.

Sex. They had to be fight-
ing for mates!

He became so excited he
twitched a foot slightly. Two
more pigs dropped dead, but
the others paid no heed.

He watched the lazily mill-
ing herd intently, at the same
time keeping an eye out for
the flying whales. Back on
Earth porpoises had been
taught to herd schools of fish
and of whales. It was not im-
possible an intelligent species
of whale had learned to herd
masses of land animals.

But Ekstrohm knew he
needed proof. He had to have
something to link the pseudo-
death of the wart-hogs to the
inexplicable presence of the
whales. Perhaps, he thought,
the “death” of the pigs was
the whales’ way of putting
them into cold storage — a
method of making the meat
seem unattractive to other
animals, on a world perhaps
without carrion scavengers. . .

Something was stirring
among the pigs.

ONE under-sized beastie
was pawing the dirt, a
red eye set on the fattest ani-
mal in sight. Then Shortie
charged Fatso. But abruptly
a large raw-boned critter was
in Shortie’s path, barring him
from Fatso.

Faced by Big Boy, Shortie
trembled with rage and went
into a terrible temper tan-
trum, rolling on the ground,
pawing it in frenzy, squealing
in maddened rage. Then
Shortie was on his feet, des-
perate determination showing
in every line of his body.
With heedless, desperate,
foolhardy courage he charged
Big Boy.

Big Boy took the headlong
charge in his side with only
a trifling grunt.

Shortie bounced ten feet in
the light gravity, and grimly
wallowed to his feet. He lev-
eled an eye at Big Boy, and
his legs were pumping in
frenzied fury again.

Big Boy shifted his kilos of
weight casually and met
Shortie head on.

The tremendous ker-rack
reverberated from the bluff
behind Ekstrohm.

Shortie lay on the ground.

No, Ekstrohm thought, he
isn’t dead. His sides were
pumping in and out. But he
was knocked cold.

Ekstrohm had to sympa-
thize with him. He had never
seen a more valiant try
against insurmountable odds.

Big Bov was ambling over
towards Fatso, apparently to
claim his prize. Fatso appar-
ently was the sow.

But Big Boy stalked on past
Fatso. She squealed after him
tentatively, but he turned and
blasted her back with a bel-
lowing snort.

JIM HARMON

Ekstrohm watched the
scene repeated with other ac-
tors several times before he
was sure.

The older males, the Big
Boys, never collected the fa-
vors of the harem for them-
selves.

Instinctively, the pigs were
practicing birth control. The
older males abstained, and
forced the younger males to
do the same.

On a world like this, Ek-
strohm’s first thought was of
death.

He thought, these pigs must
be like lemmings, deliberately
trying to destroy their own
race, to commit geno-suicide.

But that didn’t answer any
of the other questions, about
the pseudo-death, the alien
whales. . .

And then Ekstrohm
thought not of death but of
life.

THE traction-scooter was
where he had left it, hang-
ing upside down on the un-
derside of the concave slope.
It had stopped automatically
when his weight had left the
seat. He reached up, toggled
the OVERRIDE switch and
put it manually into reverse.

Once straightened out, he
was on his way back to the
base.

I feel good, he thought. I
feel like I could lick my
weight in spacemen.

Only then did he realize
why he felt so good.

What had happened had
been so strange for him, he
couldn’t realize what it had
been until now.

While he had been knock-
ed out, he had been asleep.

Asleep.

For the first time in years.

Sleep. He felt wonderful.
He felt like he could lick all
of his problems. . .

Ekstrohm roared back into
the base. The motor was si-
lent on the traction-scooter,
of course, but the air he kick-
ed up made its own racket.

Ryan and Nogol came out
to greet him sullenly.

“Listen,” he told them,
“I’ve got the answer to all
of this.”

“So have we,” Ryan said
ugly. “The fir§t answer was
the right one. We’ve been
scaring pigs to death and
watching them, scaring and
watching. We learned noth-
ing. You knew we wouldn’t.
You set us up for this. It’s
like you said. You fed all of
these beasts your stuff in ad-
vance, something that acts
when they get excited. . .”

It didn’t make sense, but
then it never had. You
couldn’t argue with prejudice.
He was “different.” He didn’t
act like they did. He didn’t
believe the same things. He
was the outsider, therefore
suspect. The alien on an alien
world.

Ekstrohm sighed. Man

THE PLANET WITH NO NIGHTMARE

would always be the final ali-
en, the creature man would
never understand, sympathize
with or even tolerate.

There was no point in try-
ing to argue further, Ek-
strohm realized.

“You’ll never understand,
Ryan. You could have seen
all the things I saw if you’d
bothered to look, but you were
too anxious to blame me. But
if I can’t make you under-
stand, I can at least beat you
into acceptance.”

“Huh?” Ryan ventured.

“I said,” Ekstrohm repeat-
ed, “that I’m going to beat
some sense into your thick
skull.”

Ryan grinned, rippled his
massive shoulders and charg-
ed.

EKSTROHM remembered
the lesson Shortie had
taught him with Big Boy. He
didn’t meet the captain’s
charge head on. He sidestep-
ped and caught Ryan behind
the ear with his fist. The big
man halted, puzzled. Ek-
strohm sank his fist into the
thick, solid belly.

Slowly, Ryan’s knees gave
way and he sank towards the
ground.

When his chin was at the
right level of convenience, Ek-
strohm put his weight behind
his right.

Ryan swayed dreamily
backward.

But he threw himself for-
ward and one ham of a fist

connected high on Ekstrohm’s
cheek. He was shaken to his
toes, and the several hours’
old pain in the back of his
head throbbed sickeningly.
One more like that would do
for him.

Ekstrohm stood and drove
in a lot of short punches to
Ryan’s body, punches without
much power behind them be-
cause he didn’t have it. But
he knew better than to try a
massive attack on a massive
target.

When he couldn’t lift his
arms any more, Ekstrohm
stopped punching. He realiz-
ed Ryan had fallen on his face
a few seconds before.

Then he remembered, and
whirled. He had left his back
exposed to Nogol.

N o g o 1 smiled. “I’m not
drawing Hazard Pay.”

After a while, Ekstrohm
stopped panting and faced
Nogol and the captain who
was now sitting, rubbing his
jaw. “Okay,” he said, “now
you’ll listen or I’ll beat your
skulls in. I know what’s be-
hind all of this on this
planet.”

“Yeah? What do you think
it is. Stormy?” Ryan asked.

“First of all, I think there’s
a basic difference between
this world and any other the
ExPe has investigated.”

“Now what could that be?”
Nogol wanted to know with a
tiny smile.

“These worlds are close.
The gravity is low. You

JIM HARMON

wouldn’t need much more
than a jet plane to get from
one of these planetoids to an-
other. Some animals have de-
veloped with the power to tra-
vel from ohe of these plane-
toids to another — like a squid
jetting out water. They har-
nessed some natural power
system.”

“What does that prove?”
Ryan wanted to know.

“It proves that this world
and others in this belt are
prepared for interplanetary
travel. It’s probably a part of
their basic evolutional struc-
ture, unlike that of heavy, in-
dependent planets. This false
‘dying’ is part of their prep-
aration for interplanetary
visitors.”

“Why would these aliens
want others to think that they
were dead?” Ryan asked.

“Correction, captain. They
want visitors to believe that
they can die.”

RYAN blinked. “Meaning
that they can't die?”
“That’s right. I think
everything on this planet has
immortality,” Ekstrohm said.
“I’m not exactly sure how.
Maybe it has to do with the
low radiation. Every indi-
vidual cell has a *memory’ of
the whole creature. But as
we age that ‘memory’ becomes
faulty, our cells ‘forget’ how
to reproduce themselves ex-
actly. Here, that cell ‘mem-
ory’ never fades. Bodies re-
new themselves indefinitely.”

“But why hide it?” Nogol
asked.

“This planetoid can just
support so many creatures.
They practice birth control
among themselves,” the sur-
veyor said. “The natives na-
turally want to discourage
colonization.”

Ryan whistled. “Once we
report this, every rich and
powerful man in the Federa-
tion will want to come here to
live. There’s not enough space
to go around. There will be
wars over this little hunk of
rock.”

Nogol’s hard, dark eyes
were staring into space.
“There’s only one sensible
thing to do. We’ll keep the
world to ourselves.”

“I don’t like that kind of
talk,” Ryan growled.

“Ryan, this little ball of
dirt isn’t going to do the Fed-
eration as a whole any good.
But it can be of value to us.
We can make ourselves com-
fortable here. Later on, we
can bring in some women.
Any women we want. Who
wouldn’t want to come here?”

Ryan began to argue, but
Ekstrohm could see he was
hooked. The man who risked
his life, the man who sought
something new and different,
the explorer, was basically an
unstable type removed from
the mainstream of civiliza-
tion. Nothing was liable to
change that.

By nightfall, Rvan and
Ekstrohm had agreed.

THE PLANET WITH NO NIGHTMARE

“We’ll have to keep a con-
stant watch,” Ryan was say-
ing. “We'll have to watch out
for ExPe scouts looking for
us. Or, after a few genera-
tions, another ship may come
to complete the mapping.”
Nogol smiled. “We'll have
to keep an eye on each other
too, you know. One of us may
get to wanting more room for
more women. Or to have chil-
dren, a normal biological
urge. Death by violence isn’t
ruled out here.”

“I don’t like that kind of
talk,” Ryan blustered.

Nogol smiled.

Ekstrohm thought of the
others, of the sleepless,
watchful nights ahead of
them. That was probably his
trouble, all of his life. He
didn’t trust people ; he had to
stay awake and keep an eye
on everybody. Well, he would
be one ahead here.

Of course, it was wrong not
to trust anybody, but Ek-
strohm knew habit patterns
were hard to break.

Sleep is a habits

RYAN and Nogol were jar-
red awake in the night by
the spaceship blasting off
without them. They ran out
and shook their tiny fists in
fury at the rising flame.

Operating a spaceship
alone was no cinch but it
could be done. Ekstrohm
would get back to the nearest
Federation base and report
the planetoid without death.
He didn’t have absolute con-
fidence in any government,
no. But he suspected the Fed-
eration could do more with
the world than two men like
Ryan and Nogol.

Ekstrohm took his fingers
off the punchboard and lay
back on his couch.

He yawned.

Ryan and Nogol were slow,
but in time they might have
learned to do without sleep,
and to guard their treasure
night and day.

Fortunately, Ekstrohm
knew from long experience
what the two others didn’t.

An eternity without sleep
isn’t worth the price. — END

In our next issue —

SPAWNING GROUND by Lester del Rey
THE FROZEN PLANET by Keith Laumer
MIRROR IMAGE by Daniel F. Galouye

— and many morel

JIM HARMON

IF ’Short Story

Naturally human work was more creative, more inspiring,
more important than robot drudgery. Naturally it was
the most important task in all the world ... or was it?

THE REAL
SELL

BY WILLIAM W. STUART

BEN TILMAN sat down in
the easiest of all easy
chairs. He picked up a maga-
zine, flipped pages; stood up,
snapped fingers; walked to
the view wall, walked back;
sat down, picked up the maga-
zine.

He was waiting, near the
end of the day, after hours, in
the lush, plush waiting room
— “The customer’s ease is the
Sales Manager’s please” — to
see the Old Man. He was fidg-
ety, but not about something.
About nothing. He was irri-
tated at nobody, at the world ;
at himself.

He was irritated at himself
because there was no clear
reason for him to be irritated
at anything.

There he sat, Ben Tilman,

HARD

normally a cheerful, pleasant
young man. He was a sales-
man like any modern man and
a far better salesman than
most. He had a sweet little
wife, blonde and pretty. He
had a fine, husky two-year-old
boy, smart, a re*il future Na-
tional Sales Manager. He
loved them both. He had every
reason to be contented with
his highly desirable, comfort-
able lot.

And yet he had been getting
more sour and edgy ever since
about six months after the
baby came home from the
Center and the novelty of re-
sponsibility for wife and child
had worn off. He had now
quit three jobs, good enough
sales jobs where he was doing
well, in a year. For no reason?

For petty, pointless reasons.

With Ancestral Insurance,
“Generations of Protection,”
he’d made the Billion Dollar
Club — and immediately begun
to feel dissatisfied with it —
just before cute, sexy, blonde
Betty had suddenly come from
nowhere into his life and he
had married her. That had
helped, sure. But as soon after
that as he had started paying
serious attention to his job
again, he was fed up with it.
“Too much paper work. All
those forms. It’s work for a
robot, not a man,” he’d told
Betty when he quit. A lie. The
paper work was, as he looked
back on it, not bad at all;
pleasant even, in a way. It
was just — nothing. Anything.

Indoor-Outdoor Climatizers
— sniffles, he said, kept killing
his sales presentation even
though his -record was good
enough. Ultra-sonic tooth-
brushes, then, were a fine
product. Only the vibration,
with his gold inlay, seemed to
give him headaches after ev-
ery demonstration. He didn’t
have a gold inlay. But the
headaches were real enough.
So he quit.

So now he had a great new
job with a great organization,
Almagamated Production for
Living — ALPRODLIV. He
was about to take on his first
big assignment.

For that he had felt a spark
of the old enthusiasm and it
had carried him into working
out a bright new sales ap-

proach for the deal tonight.
The Old Man himself had
taken a personal interest,
which was a terrific break.
And still Ben Tilman felt that
uneasy dissatisfaction. Damn.

“Mr. Robb will see you now,
Mr. Tilman,” said the cool ro-
bot voice from the Elec-Sec
Desk. It was after customer
hours and the charming hu-
man receptionist had gone.
The robot secretary, like most
working robots, was function-
al in form — circuits and
wires, mike, speaker, exten-
sion arms to type and to reach
any file in the room, wheels
for intra-office mobility.

“Thanks, hon,” said Ben.
Nevertheless, robot secre-
taries were all programmed
and rated female — and it was
wise to be polite to them. Af-
ter all, they could think and
had feelings. There were a lot
of important things they could
do for a salesman — or, some-
times, not do. This one, being
helpful, stretched out a long
metal arm to open the door to
the inner office for Ben. He
smiled his appreciation and
went in.

THE Old Man, Amalgamat-
ed’s grand old salesman,
was billiard bald, aging, a lit-
tle stout and a little slower
now. But he was still a fine
sales manager. He sat at his
huge, old fashioned oak desk
as Ben walked across the
office.

“Evening, sir.” No re-
WILLIAM W. STUART

sponse. Louder, "Good eve-
ning, Mr. Robb. Mr. Robb, it’s
Ben, sir. Ben Tilman. You
memo’d me to come — ” Still
no sign. The eyes, under the
great, beetling brows, seemed
closed.

Ben grinned and reached
out across the wide desk to-
ward the small, plastic box
hanging on the Old Man’s
chest. The Old Man glanced
up as Ben tapped the plastic
lightly with his fingernail.

"Oh, Ben. It’s you.’’ The Old
Man raised his hand to adjust
the ancient style hearing aid
he affected as Ben sank into
a chair. "Sorry Ben. I just
had old Brannic Z-IX in here.
A fine old robot, yes, but like
most of that model, long-wind-
ed. So — ’’ He gestured at the
hearing aid.

Ben smiled. Everyone knew
the Old. Man used that crude
old rig so he could pointedly
tune out conversations he
didn’t care to hear. Any time
you were talking to him and
that distant look came into his
half closed eyes, you could be
sure that you were cut off.

“Sorry, Ben. Well now. I
simply wanted to check with
you, boy. Everything all set
for tonight?”

"Well, yes, sir. Everything
is set and programmed. Betty
and I will play it all evening
for the suspense, let them
wonder, build it up — and
then, instead of the big pitch
they’ll be looking for, we’ll let
it go easy.”

THE REAL HARD SELL

"A new twist on the old
change-up. Ben, boy, it’s going
to go. I feel it. It’s in the air,
things are just ripe for a new,
super-soft-sell pitch. Selling
you’ve got to do by feel, eh
Ben? By sales genius and the
old seat of the pants. Good.
After tonight I’m going all
out, a hemisphere-wide, thirty
day campaign I’ll put the top
sales artist of every regional
office on it. They can train on
your test pattern tapes. I be-
lieve we can turn over billions
before everybody picks up the
signal and it senilesces. You
give an old man a new faith
in sales, Ben! You’re a sales-
man.”

“Well, sir — ” But the Old
Man’s knack with the youth-
ful-enthusiasm approach was
contagious. For the moment
Ben caught it and he felt
pretty good about the coming
night’s work. He and Betty
together would put the deal
over. That would be some-
thing.

Sure it would . . .

“How do you and your wife
like the place, Ben?” It was
some place, for sure, the brand
new house that Amalgamated
had installed Ben, Betty and
Bennie in the day after he had
signed up.

“It’s — uh — just fine, sir.
Betty likes it very much,
really. We both do.” He hoped
his tone was right.

"Good, Ben. Well, be sure
to stop by in the morning.
I’ll have the tapes, of course.

but I’ll want your analysis.
Might be a little vacation
bonus in it for you, too.”

"Sir, I don’t know how to
thank you.”

The Old Man waved a hand.
“Nothing you won’t have
earned, my boy. Robots can’t
sell.” That was the set dismis-
sal.

“Yes, sir. Robots can’t man-
age sales, or — ” He winked.
The Old Man chuckled. An old
joke was never too old for the
Old Man. The same old bro-
mides every time; and the
same hearty chuckle. Ben left
on the end of it.

DIALING home on his new,
Company-owned, conver-
tible soar-kart, he felt not too
bad. Some of the old lift in
spirits came as the kart-pilot
circuits digested the direc-
tions, selected a route and
zipped up into a north-north-
west traffic pattern. The Old
Map was a wonderful sales
manager and boss. The new
house-warming pitch that he
and Betty would try tonight
was smart. He could feel he
had done something.

Exercising his sales ability
with fair success, he fed him-
self this pitch all along the
two hundred mile, twenty-
minute hop home from the
city. The time and distance
didn’t bother him. “Gives me
time to think,” he had told
Betty. Whether or not this
seemed to her an advantage,
she didn’t say. At least she

liked the place, “Almalga-
mated’s Country Gentleman
Estate — Spacious, Yet fully
Automated.”

“We are,” the Old Man told
Ben when he was given the
Company - assigned quarters,
“starting a new trend. With
the terrific decline in birth
rate during the past 90 to 100
years, you’ll be astonished at
how much room there is out
there. No reason for everyone
to live in the suburban cen-
ters any more. With millions
of empty apartments in them,
high time we built something
else, eh? Trouble with people
today, no initiative in obso-
lescing. But we’ll move them.”

Home, Ben left the kart out
and conveyed up- the walk. The
front door opened. Betty had
been watching for him. He
walked to the family vueroom,
as usual declining to convey
in the house. The hell with
the conveyor’s feelings, if so
simple a robot really had any.
He liked, to walk.

“Color pattern,” Betty or-
dered the vuescreen as he
came in, “robot audio out.”
With people talking in the
house it was still necessary to
put the machines under mas-
ter automatic and manual
control. Some of the less
sophisticated robots might
pick up some chance phrase of
conversation and interpret it
as an order if left on audio.

“Ben,” said Betty, getting
up to meet him, "you’re late.”

Ben was too good a sales-

WILLIAM W, STUART

man to argue that. Instead,
he took her in his arms and
kissed her. It was a very good
sixty seconds later that she
pushed him away with a
severeness destroyed by a
blush and a giggle to say,
“Late but making up for lost
time, huh? And sober, too.
You must be feeling good for
a change.”

“Sure — and you feel even
better, sugar.” He reached for
her again. She slipped away
from him, laughing, but his
wrist tel-timer caught on the
locket she always wore, her
only momento from her par-
ents, dead in the old moon-orb
crash disaster. She stood still,
slightly annoyed, as he un-
hooked and his mood was, not
broken, but set back a little.
“What’s got into you tonight
anyway, Ben?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Did I
tell you, the O.M. may give
us a vacation? Remember
some of those nights up at
that new ‘Do It Yourself’
Camp last summer?”

“Ben !” She blushed, smiled.
“We won’t get any vacation
if we blow our house-warming
pitch tonight, you know. And
we have three couples due
here in less than a half hour.
Besides, I have to talk to you
about Nana.”

ti^pHAT damned new CD-
1 IX model. Now what?”
“She’s very upset about
Bennie. I’m not sure I blame
her. This afternoon he simply

THE REAL HARD SELL

refused his indoctrination. All
the time he should have been
playing store with Playmate
he insisted on drawing things
— himself, mind you, not
Playmate. On the walls, with
an old pencil of yours he
found someplace in your
things. Nana couldn’t do a
thing with him. She says
you’ve got to give him a spank-
ing.”

“Why me? Why not you?”
“Now Ben, we’ve been over
that and over it. Discipline is
the father’s job.”

“Well, I won’t do it. Ben-
nie’s just a baby. Let him do
a few things himself. Won’t
hurt him.”

“Ben!"

“That Nana is an officious
busybody, trying to run our
lives.”

“Oh, Ben! You know Nana
loves little Bennie. She only
wants to help hirm”

“But to what?”

“She’d never dream of lift-
ing a finger against Bennie no
matter what he did. And she
lives in terror that he’ll cut
her switch in some temper tan-
trum.”

“Hmph ! Well, I’m going up
right now and tell her if I
hear another word from her
about spanking Bennie, I’ll
cut her switch myself. Then
she can go back to Central for
reprogramming and see how
she likes it.”

“Ben! You wouldn’t.”
“Why not? Maybe she needs
a new personality?”

“You won't say a thing to
her. You’re top soft-hearted.”
“This time I won't be.”
This time he wasn't. He met
Nana CD-IX in the hallway
outside Bennie's room. Like
all nurse, teaching, and chil-
dren’s personal service robots,
she was human in form, ex-
cept for her control dial safely
out of baby’s reach, top, cen-
ter.

The human form was re-
assuring to children, kept
them from feeling strange
with parent’s back. Nana was
big, gray-haired, stout, buxom,
motherly, to reassure parents.

“Now, Mr. Tilman,” she
said with weary impatience,
“you are too late. Surely you
don’t intend to burst in and
disturb your son now.”
“Surely I do.”

“But he is having his sup-
per. You will upset him. Can’t
you understand that you
should arrange to be here be-
tween 5:30 and 6 if you wish
to interview the child?”

“Did he miss me? Sorry, I
couldn’t make it earlier. But
now I am going to see him a
minute.”

“Mr. Tilman!”

“Nana! And what’s this
about your wanting Bennie
spanked because he drew a
few pictures?”

“Surely you realize these
are the child’s formative
years, Mr. Tilman. He shouM
be learning to think in terms
of selling now — not doing
things. That’s robot work, Mr.

Tilman. Robots can’t sell, you
know, and what will people,
let alone robots think if you
let your boy grow up — ”

WTTE’s growing up fine; and
11 1 am going in to see
him.”

“Mr. Tilman!”

“And for two credits, Nana,

I’d cut your switch. You hear
me?”

“Mr. Tilman — no! No,
please. I’m sorry. Let the boy
scrawl a bit ; perhaps it won’t
hurt him. Go in and see him
if you must, but do try not to
upset him or — All right, all
right. But please Mr. Tilman,
my switch—”

“Very well Nana. I’ll leave
it. This time.”

“Thank you, Mr. Tilman.”
“So we understand each
other, Nana. Though, matter
of fact, I’m hanged if I ever .
did quite see why you senior- *
level robots get so worked up
about your identities.”
“Wouldn’t you, Mr. Til-
man?”

“Of course. But — well, yes,

I suppose I do see, in a way.
Let’s go see Bennie-boy.”

So Ben Tilman went into
the nursery and enjoyed every
second of a fast fifteen-minute
roughhouse with his round-
faced. laughing, chubby son
and heir. No doubt it was
very bad, just after supper.
But Nana, with a rather hu-
manly anxious restraint, con-
fined herself to an unobtru-
sive look of disapproval.

WILLIAM W. STUART

He left Bennie giggling and
doubtless upset, at least to a
point of uneagerness for
Nana’s bedtime story about
Billie the oldtime newsboy,
who sold the Brooklyn Bridge.

So then he was run through
a fast ten-minute shower,
shave and change by Valet.
He floated downstairs just as
Betty came out of the cocktail
lounge to say, “Code 462112
on the approach indicator.
Must be the Stoddards. They
always get every place first,
in time for an extra drink.”
“Fred and Alice, yes. But
damn their taste for gin, don’t
let Barboy keep the cork in
the vermouth all evening. I
like a touch of vermouth. I
wonder if maybe I should-
n’t—”

“No, you shouldn’t mix the
cocktails yourself and scan-
dalize everybody. You know
perfectly well Barboy really
does do better anyway.”

“Well, maybe. Everything
all set, hon ? Sorry I was late.”
"No trouble here. I just fed
Robutler the base program
this morning and spent the
rest of the day planning my
side of our Sell. How to tan-
talize the girls, pique the cu-
riosity without giving it away.
But you know — ” she laughed
a little ruefully — “I sort of
miss not having even the
shopping to do. Sometimes it
hardly seems as though you
need a wife at all.”

Ben slid an arm around her
waist. “Selling isn’t the only

thing robots can’t do, sugar.”
He pulled her close.

“Ben ! They’re at the door.”

They were, and then in the
door, oh-ing and ah-ing over
this and that. And compli-
menting Barboy on the mar-
tinis. Then the Wilsons came
and the Bartletts and that
was it.

“Three couples will be
right,” Ben had analyzed it.
"Enough so we can let them
get together and build up each
others’ curiosity but not too
many for easy control. People
that don’t know us so well
they might be likely to guess
the gimmick. We’ll let them
stew all evening while they
enjoy the Country Gentleman
House-Warming hospitality.
Then, very casually, we toss
it out and let it lie there in
front of them. They will be
sniffing, ready to nibble. The
clincher will drive them right
in. I’d stake my sales reputa-
tion on it.” If it matters a
damn, he added. But silently.

They entertained three cou-
ples at their house-warming
party. It was a delightful par-
ty, a credit to Ben, Betty and
the finest built-in house ro-
bots the mind of Amalgamat-
ed could devise.

By ten o’clock they had
dropped a dozen or more ran-
dom hints, but never a sales
pitch. Suspense was building
nicely when Betty put down
an empty glass and unobtru-
sively pushed the button to
cue Nana. Perfect timing.

THE REAL HARD SELL

They apologized to the guests,
“We’re ashamed to be so old-
fashioned but we feel better
if we look in on the boy when
he wakes in the night. It keeps
him from forgetting us.”
Then they floated off up-
stairs together, ostensibly to
see Nana and little Bennie.

Fred Stoddard : “Some place
they have here, eh? Off-beat.
A little too advanced for my
taste, this single dwelling
idea, but maybe — Ben sure
must have landed something
juicy with Amalgamated to
afford this. What the devil is
he pushing, anyway?”

Scoville Wilson (shrug) :
“Beats me. You know, before
dinner I cornered him at the
bar to see if I could slip in a
word or two of sell. Damned
if he didn’t sign an order for
my Cyclo-sell Junior Tape Li-
brary without even a C level
resistance. Then he talked a
bit about the drinks and I
thought sure he was pushing
that new model Barboy. I was
all set to come back with a
sincere ‘think it over’ — -and
then he took a bottle from the
Barboy, added a dash of ver-
mouth to his drink and walked
off without a word of sell. He
always was an odd one.”
Lucy Wilson (turns from
woman talk with the other
two wives) : “Oh no! I knew
it wasn’t the Barboy set. They
wouldn’t have him set so slow.
Besides didn’t you hear the
way she carried on about the
nursery and that lovely Nana?

That must have been a build-
up, but Ben goofed his cue to
move in on Sco and me for a
close. Doesn’t Amalgamated
handle those nurseries?”

Tom Bartlett : “Amalgamat-
ed makes almost anything.
That’s the puzzle. I dunno —
but it must be something big.
He has to hit us with some-
thing, doesn’t he?”

Belle Bartlett: “Who ever
heard of a party without a
sell?”

Nancy Stoddard : “Who ever
heard of a party going past
ten without at least a warm-
up pitch? And Betty prom-
ised Fred to send both Ben
and Bennie to the Clinic for
their Medchecks. You know
we have the newest, finest
diagnosticians — ”

Fred Stoddard: “Nancy!”
Nancy Stoddard: “Oh, I’m
sorry. I shouldn’t be selling
you folks at their party,
should I? Come to think,
you’re all signed with Fred
anyway, aren’t you? Well,
about Ben, / think—”

Lucy Wilson : “Sh-h-h !

Here they come.”

SMILING, charming — and
still not an order form in
sight — Ben and Betty got
back to their guests. Another
half hour. Barboy was pass-
ing around with nightcaps.
Lucy Wilson nervously put a
reducegar to her sophisticated,
penpermint-striped lips.

Quickly Ben Tilman was on
his feet. He pulled a small,

WILIIAM W. STUART

metal cylinder from his pock-
et with a flourish and held it
out on his open palm toward
Lucy. A tiny robot Statue of
Liberty climbed from the cyl-
inder, walked across Ben’s
hand, smiled, curtsied and
reached out to light the re-
ducegar with her torch, pip-
ing in a high, thin voice,
“Amalgamated reducegars are
cooler, lighter, finer.”

“Ben ! How simply darling !”
“Do you like it? It’s a new
thing from Amalgamated Nov-
elDiv. You can program it for
up to a hundred selective sell
phrases, audio or visio key.
Every salesman should have
one. Makes a marvelous gift,
and surprisingly reasonable.”
“So that's it, Ben. I just
love it!”

“Good! It’s yours, compli-
ments of Amalgamated.”

“But — then you’re not sell-
ing them? Well, what on
earth—?”

“Damn it, Ben,” Fred Stod-
dard broke in, “come on,
man, out with it. What in hell
are you selling? You’ve given
us the shakes. What is it? The
Barboy set? It’s great. If I
can scrape up the down pay-
ment, 1*11 — ”

“After we furnish a nur-
sery with a decent Nana, Fred
Stoddard,” Nancy snapped,
"and get a second soar-kart.
Ben isn’t selling Barboys any-
way, are you, Ben? It is that
sweet, sweet Nana, isn’t it?
And I do want one, the whole
nursery, Playmate and all,

THE REAL HARD SELL

girl-programmed of course,
for our Polly.”

“Is it the nursery, Betty?”
Lucy pitched in her credit’s
worth. “Make him tell us,
darling. We have enjoyed
everything so much, the din-
ner. the Tri-deo, this whole
lovely, lovely place of yours.
Certainly the house wanning
has been perfectly charming.”
“And that’s it,” said Ben
smiling, a sheaf of paper
forms suddenly in his hand.
“What? Not — ?”

"The house, yes. Amalga-
mated’s Country Gentleman
Estate, complete, everything
in it except Bennie, Betty and
me. Your equity in your Cen-
ter co-op can serve as down
payment, easy three-genera-
tion terms, issue insurance.
Actually, I can show you how,
counting in your entertain-
ment, vacation, incidental, and
living expenses, the Country
Gentleman will honestly cost
you less.”

“Ben!”

“How simply too clever!”
Ben let it rest there. It was
enough. Fred Stoddard, after
a short scuffle with Scoville
Wilson for the pen, signed the
contract with a flourish. Sco
followed.

“There!” y

“There now, Ben,” said Bet-
ty,, holding Bennie a little
awkwardly in her arms in the
soar-kart. They had moved
out so the Stoddards could
move right in. Now they were
on their way in to their re-

served suite at Amalgamated’s
Guest-ville. “You were abso-
lutely marvellous. Imagine
selling all three of them!”

“There wasn’t anything to
it, actually.”

“Ben, how can you say
that? Nobody else could have
done it. It was a sales master-
piece. And just think. Now
salesmen all over the hemis-
phere are going to follow your
sales plan. Doesn’t it make
you proud? Happy? Ben, you
aren’t going to be like that
again?”

No, of course he wasn’t. He
was pleased and proud. Any-
way, the Old Man would be,
and that, certainly, was some-
thing. A man had to feel good
about winning the approval of
Amalgamated’s grand Old
Man. And it did seem to make
Betty happy.

But the Actual selling of the
fool house and even the two
other, identical houses on the
other side of the hill — he iust
couldn’t seem to get much of
a glow over it. He had done
it; and what had he done? It
was the insurance and the
toothbrushes all over again,
and the old nervous, sour feel-
ing inside.

“At least we do have a va-
cation trip coming out of it,
hon. The O.M. practicallv
promised it yesterdav. if our
sell sold. We could — ”

“ — go back to that queer
new ‘Do It Yourself’ camp un
on the lake you insisted on
dragging me to the last week

of our vacation last summer.
Ben, really !” He was going to
be like that. She knew it.

“Well, even you admitted it
was some fun.”

“Oh, sort of, I suppose. For
a little while. Once you got
used to the whole place with-
out one single machine that
could think or do even the
simplest little thing by itself.
So, well, almost like being
savages. Do you think it
would be safe for Bennie? We
can’t watch him all the time,
you know.”

“People used to manage in
the old days. And remember
those people, the Burleys, who
were staying up there?”
“That queer, crazy bunch
who went there for a vacation
when the Camp was first
ooened and then just stayed?
Honestly, Ben! Surely you’re
not thinking of — ”

“Oh, nothing like that. Just
a vacation. Only — ”

Only those queer, peculiar
people, the Burleys had seem-
ed so relaxed and cheerful.
Grandma and Ma Burley
cleaning, washing, cooking on
the ancient electric stove;
little Donnie, being a nuisance,
poking at the keys on his
father's crude, manual type-
writer, a museum piece; Don-
nie and his brothers wasting
away childhood digging and
piling sand on the beach, pad-
dling a boat and actually
building a play house. It was
mad. People playing robots.
And yet, they seemed to have

WILLIAM W. STUART

a wonderful time while they
were doing it.

“But how do you keep stay-
ing here?” he had asked Buck
Burley, “Why don’t they put
you out?”

“Who?” asked Buck. “How?
Nobody can sell me on .iv-
ing. We like it here. No robot
can force us out. Here we are.
Here we stay.”

THEY pulled into the Guest-
ville ramp. Bennie was
fussy; the nursery Nana was
strange to him. On impulse,
Betty took him in to sleep in
their room, ignoring the dis-
approving stares of both the
Nana and the Roboy with
their things.

They were tired, let down.
They went to bed quietly.

In the morning Betty was
already up when Ben stum-
bled out of bed. “Hi,” she said,
nervously cheerful. “The
house Nanas all had overload
this morning and I won’t
stand for any of those utility
components with Bennie. So
I’m taking care of him my-
self."

Bennie chortled and drool-
ed vita-meal at his high-chair,
unreprimanded. Ben mustered
a faint smile and turned to 00
dial a shave, cool shower and
dress at Robather.

That done, he had a bite of
breakfast. He felt less than
top-sale, but better. Last night
had gone well. The Old Man
would give them a pre-paid
vacation clearance to any re-

THE REAL HARD SELL

sort in the world or out. Why
gloom?

He rubbed Bennie’s unruly
hair, kissed Betty and convey-
ed over from Guest-ville to
office.

Message-sec, in tone re-
spect-admiration A, told him
the Old Man was waiting for
him. Susan, the human recep-
tionist in the outer office, fa-
vored him with a dazzling
smile. There was a girl who
could sell ; and had a product
of her own, too.

The Old Man was at his
big, oak desk but, a signal
honor, he got up and came
half across the room to grab
Ben’s hand and shake it. “Got
the full report, son. Checked
the tapes already. That’s sell-
ing, boy! I'm proud of you.
Tell you what, Ben. Instead
of waiting for a sales slack,
I'm going to move you and
that sweet little wife of yours
right into a spankirg new,
special Country Gentleman
unit I had iivmind for myself.
And a nice, fat boost in your
credit rating has already gone
down to accounting. Good?
artistic sales challenge that is
Good. Now, Ben, I have a real,
crying for your talent.”

“§ir? Thank you. But, sir,
there, is the matter of the va-
cation-— ”

“Vacation? Sure, Ben. Take
a vacation anytime. But right
now it seems to the Old Man
you’re on a hot selling streak.
I don’t want to see you get
off the track, son; your into

^ #»V4 • » * * rfTf1 ' " *nrv^# • ^ ^

* *r *«r • »^r

W. STUAI

V/ILL'AW

ests are mine. And wait till
you get your teeth into this
one. Books, Ben boy. Books!
People are spending all their
time sitting in on Tri-deo,
not reading. People should
read more, Ben. Gives them
that healthy tired feeling.
Now we have the product. We
have senior Robo-writers with
more circuits than ever be-
fore. All possible information,
every conceivable plot. Maybe
a saturation guilt type cam-
paign to start — but it’s up to
you, Ben. I don't care how you
do it, but move books.”
“Books, eh? Well, now.”
Ben was interested. “Funny
thing, sir, but that ties in
with something I was think-
ing about just last night.”
“You have an angle? Good
boy!”

“Yes, sir. Well, it is a wild
'bought maybe, but last sum-
mer when I was on vacation I
met a man up at that new
camp and — well, I know it
sounds silly, but he was writ-
ing a book.”

“Nonsense!”

“Just what I thought, sir.
But I rpad some of it and, I
don't know, it had a sort of a
feel about it. Something new,
sir, it might catch on.”

“All right, all right. That’s
enough. You’re a salesman.
You’ve sold me.”

“On the book?” Ben was
surprised.

“Quit pulling an old man’s
leg, Ben. I’m sold on your
needing a vacation. I’ll fill out

THE REAL HARD SELL

your vacation pass right
now.” The Old Man, still a
vigorous, vital figure, turned
and walked back to his Desk-
sec. “Yes sir,” said the secre-
tarial voice, “got it. Vacation
clearai.ce for Tilman, Ben,
any resort.”

“And family,” said Ben.

“And family. Very good,
sir.”

The Old Man made his sign
on the pass and said heavily,
“All right then, Ben. That’s it.
Maybe if you go back up to
that place for a few days and
see that psycho who was writ-
ing a book again, perhaps
you’ll realize how impractical
it is.”

“But sir! I'm serious about
that book. It really did have
— ” he broke off.

The Old Man was sitting
there, face blank, withdrawn.
Ben could feel he wasn’t even
listening. That damned hear-
ing aid of his. The Old Man
had cut it off. Suddenly, un-
reasoningly, Ben was furious.
He stood by the huge desk and
he reached across toward the
hearing aid on the Old Man’s
chest to turn up the volume.
The Old Man looked up and
saw Ben’s hand stretching out.

A sudden look of Tear came
into his china blue, clear eyes
but he made no move. He sat
frozen in his chair.

Ben hesitated a second.
“What—?" But he didn’t have
to ask. He knew.

And he also knew what he
was going to do.

“No!” said the Old Man.
“No, Ben. I’ve only been try-
ing to help ; trying to serve
your best interests the best
way I know. Ben, you must-
n’t—”

But Ben moved forward.

HE took the plastic box on
the Old Man’s chest and
firmly cut the switch.

The Old Man, the Robot Old
Man, went lifeless and slump-
ed back in his chair as Ben
stretched to cut off the Desk-
sec. Then he picked up his va-
cation clearance.

“Robots can’t sell, eh?” he
said to the dead machine be-
hind the desk. “Well, you
couldn’t sell me that time,
could you, Old Man?

Clumsily, rustily, Ben whis-
tled a cheerful little off-key
tune to himself. Hell, they
could do anything at all — ex-
cept sell.

“You can’t fool some of the
people all of the time,” he re-
marked over his shoulder to
the still, silent figure of the
Old Man as he left the office,
“it was a man said that.” He
closed the door softly behind
him.

Betty would be waiting.
Betty was waiting. Her
head ached as she bounced
Bennie, the child of Ben, of
herself and of an unknown
egg cell from an anonymous
ovary, on her knees. Betty
3-RC-VIII, secret, wife-style
model, the highest develop-
ment of the art of Robotics

had known instantly when
Ben cut the Old Man’s switch.
She had half expected it. But
it made her headache worse.

“But damn my program-
ming!” She spoke abruptly,
aloud, nervously fingering the
locket around her neck.
“Damn it and shift circuit.
He’s right ! He is my husband
and he is right and I’m glad.
I’m glad we’re going to the
camp and I’m going to help
him stay.”

After all, why shouldn’t a
man want to do things just as
much as a robot? He had
energy, circuits, feelings too.
She knew he did.

For herself, she loved her
Ben and Bennie. But still just
that wasn’t enough occupa-
tion. She was glad they were
going to the new isolation
compound for non-psyehotic
but unstable, hyper-active,
socially dangerous individual
humans. At the camp there
would be things to do.

At the camp they would be
happy.

All at once the headache
that had been bothering her
so these past months was
gone. She felt fine and she
smiled at little Bennie. “Ben-
nie-boy,” she said, kissing his
smooth, untroubled baby fore-
head. “Daddy’s coming.” Ben-
nie laughed and started to
reach for the locket around
Mommy’s neck. But just then
the door opened and he jump-
ed down to run and meet his
daddy. END

WILLIAM W. STUART

IF • tA (j)velette

★

The

Stainless- Steel

tonight

BY JACK RACKHAM

illustrated by IVIE

★

He had everything a knight needed s
gallant steed , fair lady

mid the most unconquerable little home-made dragon
in a billion solar systems l

WHEN the twisted and
radioactive wreckage
screamed down out of space
on to their dark planet, the
Shogleet were instantly in-
trigued. To that incredibly an-
cient race, evolved to the point
whei'e energy, matter and
form had no more secrets to
hide and only curiosity re-
mained, anything new was an
occasion for rejoicing. And
this was new.

Metals, plastics, physical
and chemical combinations —
they were familiar enough.
But this strange mass had
been formed into a particular
shape. They probed at once,
and at once found that there
was something more.

Something lived, but only
just.

Using their combined tal-
ents, they caught at the fragile
remnant, preserved it, studied
it, reconstructed it. From the
still viable patterns of intelli-
gence, they deduced the whole.
They remade a man. They
went further, discovering his
history and, from that, some-
thing of the history of the
whole species. They were un-
willing to admit that such a
monstrosity could be genuine,
yet their probings could not
be argued. So they remade
his ship, which had obviously
been only a small part of the
whole tangled wreckage, and
they sent it back whence it had
came. And they appointed

one of their number to go With
it, and him, to investigate.

THE Shogleet crouched by
Lancelot’s beautiful boots,
and purred. The purr was not
a sign of pleasure, but the by-
product of producing an out-
line-blurring vibration and a
curiosity-damping field. The
corridor outside the Agent-
Director’s office was a busy
place, and the Shogleet had
no wish to be observed.

Yet it was pleased. These
things called Men were even
more fantastically odd than it
had at first imagined. With its
perceptors extended, it was
listening to the conversation
on the other side of the wall.
Voices were discussing Lance-
lot.

“ — not only made us a
laughing-stock, but he’s get-
ting to be a damned pest!
Hanging about outside my of-
fice, demanding to be sent on
a mission. I wouldn’t trust
him to empty my waste-bas-
ket. What the hell am I going
to do with him?”

“Perhaps we might cook up
a mission for him, Chief.”
“Don’t be obscene, Peters.
That moron, on a mission?
Don’t forget, this is the blast-
ed idiot who tried to rescue a
disabled star-ship with a one-
man raft!”

“Just the same, Chief, we
could pick out something.”
“But I can’t send a Prime
G-man on a routine call, damn
it. Not that he is a Prime,

JOHN RACKHAM

except on paper. But you know
what I mean.”

“Ah, but wait until you hear
what I’ve dug up. It’s from
a Vivarium planet. We don’t
usually handle those. What
generally happens is that the
local man goes in, disguised,
and re-sets the alarm, then
smoothes out the fuss. Doesn’t
affect us unless it’s a case of
external invasion, you know.”
“All right, all right. I know
all that. But what’s it to me?
Some inside problem on a Viv
planet. So?”

“Yes. But this planet is
called Avalon. It’s static in the
‘pseudo-feudal’ stage, with a
culture based on Arthurian
legend. Get it?”

The Shogleet, recording all
this avidly, head a gasp. Put-
ting mental query marks
against the new terms, it went
on listening.

“Arthurian!” Hugard
breathed. “Peasants. Knights
in armor. Sword and shield
stuff. Go on.”

"I thought we could play
it up big, and let him have it.
Make it sound a desperate
emergency. Give him some-
thing to do.”

“Yes. Quite harmless, of
course. But I like the sound of
it. Where is this Avalon?”
“That’s the best part, Chief.
It’s in the Omega Centaurus
cluster. That’s twenty thou-
sand lights away!”

“That settles it for me. It
will take him a . month, real
time, just to get there. I’ll be

THE STAINLESS STEEL KNIGHT

shut of him for a while. Sure
we’re not treading on any pri-
vate toes with this?”
“Absolutely. Strictly a rou-
tine call, on a waiting list.”
“Fine. Fine! Get me the
data so I can blow it up big,
and then shoot him in here.
Peters, I won’t forget this. To
think that I’m going to be rid
of that moron, for a while at
least — ”

THE Shogleet crept to Lan-
celot’s shoulder, shivering
gently with anticipation.
When the summons came, it
rode into the office with him
and saw him stiffen into a
stern salute before the Direc-
tor’s desk.

“Ah, Lake,” Hugard nodded
portentously. “At last I have
a mission for you. Something
I cannot pass on to anyone
else. It will tax your powers
to the utmost. I am not asking
you to volunteer ; I am order-
ing you to go. That is how
serious it is. You understand?”
“I do, sir,” Lancelot said,
sternly. “Rely on me!”

“Good man! I was count-
ing on that. Now, you’ll take
full details with you to study
en route, of course, but I can
give you the gist. The planet
is Avalon. The alarm is ur-
gent. Avalon is a closed cul-
ture. No one, not even we of
Galactopol, can intervene in
a closed culture, unless the
situation is desperately criti-
cal.” The Shogleet felt Lance-
lot stiffen, saw the swell of

his chest and the fire in his
eyes, and wondered anew at
these strange creatures who
thrilled to the prospect of
imminent danger.

“Most importantly — ” Hug-
gard hushed his voice —
“As this is a closed culture,
I can only send one man. You
will be alone. Single-handed.
You will be equipped, of
course, as fully as possible,
compatible with the culture.
But everything else will be up
to you. You’re on your own.”

“I understand, sir,” Lance-
lot said simply. “Rely on me.
If it's called for, I’ll stake my
life, rather than let down the
Service.” Huggard turned his
face away, obviously overcome
by some strong emotion. Then,
coughing, he handed a form
to Lancelot and stood up.

“That’s your authorization.
You’ll pick up the rest of the
documents at the front office.
How soon can you leave?”

“At once!” Lancelot snap-
ped, saluting crisply. Hugard
put out a hand.

“Good luck, my boy. You’ll
need it.”

“Thank you, sir.” Lancelot
took the hand with an enthu-
siasm that made the Director
wince. “Don’t worry about
me. I’ll come through!” He
spun on his heel and marched
from the office.

“You know,” he confided to
the Shogleet, “Hugard isn’t
such a bad old guy, after all.
I thought he was neglecting
me. But I can see his point,

now. I’ve misjudged him.” ...

“Lancelot,” the Shogleet
whispered, “do something for
me. Get a stock of visio-tapes
on feudal cultures, vivarium
planets and the Arthurian
legend.”

“All right. Anything to
oblige. But you pick the queer-
est things to be curious about.
Arthurian legends, is it? My
Dad used to be interested in
them.”

THIS the Shogleet already
knew, as well as much
more. It had learned, for one
thing, the truer version of
how Lancelot Lake came to be
cast away in the first place.
This it had picked up from
various sources, in and about
Galactopol headquarters.

Lancelot Lake had been a
humble technician in the low-
est grades of Galactopol, serv-
ing his time in a spaceways
emergency - and - observation
station, and passing his time
in dreams of glamor and
glory. He shared the simple
faith of his equally simple
parents, that it was just a
matter of time before he had
his big “break.” And Fate had
been very obliging.

The star-class liner Orion,
carrying wealthy passengers
but very little else, had devel-
oped a major defect in her
main drive. Her skipper, in
angry calm, warped out of
hyper-drive, gave the order
“Abandon Ship!” and pointed
his lifeboat cluster toward the

JOHN RACKHAM

nearest E-and-O station. It
had not been an emergency.
There had not been the least
danger — only nuisance, and
the loss of a valuable ship.
The lifeboat signals had plain-
ly said so.

But Lancelot had read his
own special brand of under-
standing into those signals.
On the run, fired with holy
zeal, he had broken out his
one-man raft, designed purely
for short-range forays about
the surface of his planetoid-
station. Linking in to the pow-
erful, all - wave, sub - etheric
emergency radio of the sta-
tion and giving a blow-by-
blow account of his effort, he
had stormed off to rescue the
Orion single-handed.

No one could hear the life-
boat signals, after that. The
Orion company reached the
E-and-0 station quite safely.
There, in company with every
other open planet in the Gal-
axy, they had listened, fas-
cinated, to the classic broad-
cast that Lancelot was pour-
ing out.

Dedicated, always brave,
heedless of personal safety,
washed with the radiation
from a rapidly disintegrating
nuclear drive, he kept on to
the inevitable, hopeless, gal-
lant end. Like a gnat grao-
pling a runaway elephant, he
went spiralling down into the
great gravity sink of Antares,
until the thermal radiation
from that giant sun over-
whelmed his transmission.

THE STAINLESS STEEL KNIGHT

The rest was silence.

Now, a stupid, gloriously
gallant, dead hero, is one
thing. Posthumous awards are
a matter of little consequence.
It was nothing — the least
they could do — to make the
deceased Lancelot a Prime G-
man. But the same hero re-
turned from the dead was
something else again, as the
Shogleet had learned.

Perhaps, it pondered, they
had done too good a job of the
reconstruction. They had made
him strictly according to the
images in his own brain. Con-
sequently, he was big, brawny,
blue -eyed, golden-haired,
handsome, and well-nigh in-
destructible . . . translating
literally the concept “You
can’t keep a good man down.”
Had Lancelot known Hamlet,
he would have agreed with
his description : “What a piece
of work is Man ; how noble in
reason; how infinite in facul-
ties ; in form and .moving, how
express and admirable; in ac-
tion how like an angel; in
apprehension how like a god !”
But Hamlet was insane,
whereas Lancelot was sincere,
simole, and assured of the
reality of his dream. Hence —
as Hugard had said — a
damned pest.

LANCELOT’S happy glow
lasted well into the second
week. Then he grew bored.
The ship, though small, was

comfortable and almost self-
directive. There was nothing
to do.

He decided to check his
equipment. The Shogleet, en-
grossed in the tortuous lan-
guage of Mallory, was inter-
rupted by its ward, who came
bearing a long and shining
rod tipped with a razor-edged
blade.

“This thing,” he said. “It’s
a lance, isn’t it? And there’s
another thing, like a big blade
with a cross-bar and a hand-
grip. A sword?”

“I would think so. There
should be armor, also. I gather
you are to masquerade as a
knight. From the literature,
it seems there actually was a
knight named Sir Lancelot.”

“That’s so. My Dad used to
tell about him. Oh, Hugard
knew what he was doing when
he picked me for this mission !
Fate, that’s what it is.” The
Shogleet had other views, but
kept discreetly silent about
them. 'v

“The concept of a vivarium
culture interests me,” it said.
“Apparently not all men seek
change, only a small percen-
tage?"

“That’s so,” Lancelot nod-
ded, sagely. “The happy man
is the adjusted man. Knows
what he’s good at and where
he belongs, and gets on with
it. Like me, for instance. Nat-
ural born adventurer — and
here I am.”

“But you were originally a
station-keeper. A mistake?”

“Oh, no. Psycho-dynamics
is infallible. That station-
keeper job was just a starter,
so that I could work up.”
The Shogleet, knowing full
well that Lancelot knew noth-
ing at all about the science of
psycho - dynamics, wished it
had asked for a tape on that.
It was curious to see how the
technique would work out on
a whole planet seeded with
one psycho-type.

Eventually, warning bells
gave tongue and their little
ship went down, on a guide
beacon, over a green and
peaceful world, dotted with
islands, laced with blue sea,
into a small glade ringed with
rugged hills. It was just on
sunrise, on a glorious spring
morning.

Lancelot breathed deep of
unfiltered air and the sweet
scent of growing things, and
found an immediate complaint
to make.

E’RE about a hundred
▼V miles away from the
chief city, Camlan,” he said,
as he frowned at a map. “And
no transport. I mean, that kit
I have to wear, it’s a weight.
It’s not going to be easy just
getting it on, much less walk-
ing.”

“According to the accounts,”
the Shogleet said. “A knight
rode something. A steed, I
believe, or horse. What is a
horse, Lancelot?”

“Damned if I know. I vague-
ly recall drawings, when I was

JOHN RACKHAM

a kid. Sort of big animal,If%r
legs, head at one end, tail1* at
the other. But stop a bit, that
explains something — ” and
he lugged out some massive
pieces of metal-work. ‘These
had me baffled, but they must
be horse-armor. And this
thing is a seat, to go on its
back, 1 guess.”

“I shall have to approxi-
mate,” the Shogleet decided.
“From your memories, and
what I have read, 1 will trans-
form myself into a horse.”

“All right, but give me a
hand with this hardware first.
I can't get it on alone. In fact,
I don't see how it can all go
on one man!”

But, with patience and
struggling, trial and error,
they got the pieces that a
skilled synthesist had fabri-
cated from the patterns of
museum relics buckled, strap-
ped and locked about Lancelot.

His guess had been good.
He could hardly hold upright
under the load of metal.

“How the hell does any-
body hop about,” he complain-
ed, making a few labored
steps, “and swing a sword in
this lot? It's not possible!”

The Shogleet paid no atten-
tion. It was busy on its own
accou nt. Swallowing great
quantities of air and energy,
and speeding its metabolism
to a great rate, it was con-
verting its mass to a some-
thing that would fit that
armor. Lancelot, shambling
round, gave advice according

THE STAINLESS STEEL KNIGHT

to Els Blurred memories. Then,
struggling mightily, he hoist-
ed up the pieces one at a time,
and then, the saddle. Sweat
was dribbling into his boots
by the time he was done.

“Hell! This is a day's work
by itself,” he groaned, bash-
ing his helmet in a vain at-
tempt to wipe away the sweat
from his brow. “There must
be an easier way.”

“I imagine,” the Shogleet-
horse guessed, “that this is
why the knight had a squire,
as it says in the tapes.” Lan-
celot grunted his heartfelt
agreement at this, hung the
blank shield on a saddle-hook,
the sword and sheath on the
opposite side, stood the long
lance by a handy tree, and
eased his visor down past his
nose, which was already raw
from the first, light-hearted
try.

Then he eyed the stirrups.

“You'll have to kneel,” he
said. “I'll never make it up
there.”

He climbed aboard gingerly,
and they left the glade at a
sedate walk. “First thing,” he
said firmly, “we get a squire.
I'll never make it to Camlan
at this rate.”

“Very well,” the Shogleet
agreed, trying to work out a
method of progress that would
not unseat Lancelot. It com-
promised on a rubber-legged
shamble which carried them at
a smooth glide through what
it assumed was a “woody
glen.” Half an hour of this

brought them to a clearing,
laid out in a chessboard of
little fields, with a huddle of
timber shacks in the center.
Their arrival was the signal
for a bedlam of shouts,
screams and f ran tics barking
from a horde of half -wild dogs.

The uproar lasted only a
second or two. Then all was
silent, apart from furtive rus-
tlings in the nearby bushes.

“Where did everybody go?”
Lancelot demanded, grabbing
the saddle-horn. “How am I
going to round up a squire,
if they all run off like that?
No, wait — there’s one, over
by that tree.”

HE was an old man, grizzle-
haired and cramped with
rheumatic stiffness. In his
simple brown smock, he clung
to the tree and trembled at
their gliding approach. Lan-
celot let go the saddle-horn
and tried to sit up, impres-
sively.

“Ho, there !” he called. “Why
did everyone run away?”
“Marry, fair sir,” the old-
ster mumbled, cringing. “It
would have been at sight of
the strange beast thou ridest.
No mortal eye ever saw such
a mount before.”

“What's wrong with me?”
the Shogleet demanded curi-
ously. “Isn’t a horse like this?”
“Now strike me dead!” the
peasant blanched, clutching
the tree. “It spoke like a
Christian. I heard it!”

“Naturally,” Lancelot said

grandly. “’Tis a magic steed,
just as I am a holy knight. I
have need of a squire. Call the
others, that I may choose.”
“Nay, noble sir, we are but
humble peasants. Wilt find no
squire here.”

“Oh, blast!” Lancelot re-
lapsed into Galactic in his irri-
tation. Then, with strained
patience, “Where then shall a
knight find himself a squire?”
“The Baron Deorham has
many such,” the old man of-
fered. “Steeds, too, though
none such as thou ridest. But
he is a wonderly wroth man,
and a great warrior. He will
surely attack thee, an thou
come near him.”

“Fear not for me, old man.
I am Sir Lancelot. I will to
Deorham.”

“Lancelot! Now am I dead
and in hell, forsooth. Lancelot
is legend!”

“Never mind . that. Just
point the way, you old fool.”
The old man cringed again,
and wobbled a shaky arm in
the direction of a rough track.
The Shogleet went into its
gliding run again.

“A pity I couldn’t get him
to put me right on this shape,”
it said. “I must study a real
horse at the first opportunity.”
“This feels all right,” Lan-
celot argued. “Still, I suppose
you’re right. It won't do to
scare the locals out of their
wits all the time . . . Say, that
looks a likely place.”

They had broken clear of
trees, and before them the

JOHN RACKHAM

grass went away in a slow
rise to a hill, where there was
a massive gray building. “Just
let me do the talking. Appar-
ently horses aren’t supposed
to talk.” He clutched the sad-
dle-horn valiantly, and they
went on at a fair speed.

Suddenly the Shogleet sens-
ed life and movement nearby,
and swung round.

“What did you do that for?”
Lancelot demanded, clinging
desperately. Then he saw what
the Shogleet had detected.
About seventy yards away,
just rounding an outflung
clump of trees, came three rid-
ers. On either side the figures
were slight, but the man in
the center was gross, his steed
huge, his armor bright in the
sun. His shield bore the device
of a mailed fist, and his lance
carried a fluttering blue plume
at its tip.

“That’s what I want,” Lan-
celot muttered. “A picture on
my shield and a flag on my
stick. Then they’ll know who
I am.”

“So that,” the Shogleet mur-
mured, interestedly, “is what
a horse is like.” And it dis-
creetly began modifying its
shape. “We should keep still,”
it advised. “Let him come to
us. I want to see that creature
move.”

As if in answer to the
thought the big man put up a
mailed fist. They distinctly
heard the click of his visor as
it snapped into place. Then he
applied his heels to his mount

THE STAINLESS STEEL KNIGHT

and began thundering at them
over the turf.

44T OOK at him go!” Lan-

-L* celot said, admiringly.
“I must learn to ride like
that.” The mighty figure thun-
dered nearer, and Lancelot
grew uneasy. “He’ll never be
able to stop in time,” he mut-
tered. “Not at that clip. Now
what’s the fool up to?” — for
the stranger had dropped his
lance to the horizontal, and
the point was aimed straight
at Lancelot. The Shogleet,
ever curious, stood quite still.

“Hey! You lunatic! Point
that thing the other way !”
Lancelot yelled. But it was
obvious even to him that the
other had no intention of do-
ing any such thing. At the last
minute, he managed to fumble
up his shield. There was a
rending crash as point met
shield, fair and square. Lance-
lot shot backwards over the
Shogleet’s cruppers, to land
with a jarring thud on the
ground. The Shogleet spun
round, to watch as the yoilng
man groaned, sat up and then
struggled to his feet.

“Art unhorsed!” the stran-
ger roared. “Dost yield?”

“Yield nothing,” Lancelot
gasped, indignantly. “I wasn’t
even fighting. You want to
give a bit of notice, next time
you do something like that.
Charging up like that without
so much as a word . . .” and
that was as far as he got. The
strange knight, backing up

and tossing away his shattered
lance, had yanked out his
sword. Putting heels to his
horse again, he tore up to
where Lancelot stood. His
blade rose and fell mightily,
and a clang echoed across the
meadow. Lancelot went down
on his knees, hung there a
moment and then kneeled
over, groaning. The Shogleet
trotted to where he lay and
nuzzled him.

“You must get up and fight,”
it murmured. “I believe you
are liable to be taken captive
otherwise.”

“Fight !” Lancelot mumbled.
“I’m half-killed already. That
damned lunatic should be put
away.” He sat up and banged
his mailed fist on his helmet
to clear his head. The knight
backed off a yard or two,
waiting.

“Get up, quickly,” the Shog-
leet encouraged, and knelt.
This sent the knight’s horse
into a rearing frenzy, giving
Lancelot time to mount — and
time to get annoyed, also.

“All right,” he growled.
“Wants a fight, does he? We’ll
see about that.” He unsheath-
ed his sword with an effort
The strange knight crouched,
setting his horse into another
gallop. At the critical mo-
ment, he stood up in his saddle
to give more power to his
sword-arm. Lancelot heaved
his shield up, the shock numb-
ing his arm. then swung blind-
ly in riposte.

“Turn round,” he ordered,
48

as the knight charged past.
“Let me have another bash
at him. I only nicked him that
time.”

“You may kill him, you
know.”

“And what d'you fancy he’s
been trying to do to me? I’m
black and blue all over. Let me
have another crack at him, I
said !”

“Wouldn’t it be wiser to ask
him to yield? In that way, we
might get some information,
which we sadly need.” Lance-
lot grumbled under his breath,
but when he saw that his cas-
ual swipe had sheared the
knight’s helmet-spike, and
split his shield in half, he
agreed reluctantly.

“Ho, knight,” he called, and
waved his sword. “Wilt yield?”

“To a foul fiend from the
pit?” the knight roared, toss-
ing away his ruined shield and
bent sword. “Never! Pit thy
sorcery against this !” And he
unhooked from his saddle a
short length of heavy chain,
ending in an iron ball studded
with vicious spikes. Once
again, he came thundering
forward.

“There!” Lancelot gasped.
“I said the man was raving.
If he catches me with that
thing, I'm a dead duck.”

He put up his shield and
peered round it warily. The
spiked ball flailed through the
air and crashed full on the
shield, slamming the young
man over to an extreme angle.
In sudden, blind rage, he

JOHN RACKHAM

swung back, lashed out with
the sword, felt it bite into
something. Then, as the Shog-
leet bridled off, he looked back,
and his stomach squirmed.

The super-hard, razor-keen
blade had sliced through ar-
mor and knight, from shoul-
der to groin. There was blood
everywhere.

Ill

44npHE fool would have it,”
A he muttered. “Now
there’ll be trouble.”

But the body was hardly
flopped to rest before the two
attendants rode up, slid from
their mounts and went down,
each on a knee, heads bowed.

“Spare me, Sir Knight,”
they said, in unison. “I am
thy servant.”

“They’re only kids,” Lance-
lot said, surprised. “What are
your names?”

“I am hight Alaric,” said
the ginger one, on the left.

“And I, Ector,” the other
added, shaking his long yel-
low locks. “How shall we call
thee, Lord?” The Shogleet felt
Lancelot brace up and stiffen.

“I am Sir Lancelot!” he
announced. They promptly
flat on their faces. “Oh, get
up!” he said, irritably. “I’m
not going to eat you. Now,
one’s to be my squire, and the
other to look after my horse.
Which way do you want it?”
“The horse!” they said, to-
gether and at once.

THE STAINLESS STEEL KNIGHT

“That won’t be necessary,”
the Shogleet said, forgetting.
“I can look after myself quite
well.” Again the two youths
fell to the ground, shaking and
white.

“Get up !” Lancelot shouted.
“How can I get anything done
if you keep passing out, all
the time? Now, what happens
about him?”

“Thy liege-men will attend
to it, Lord,” said Alaric, in a
shaky voice.

“My liege-men?”

“But certainly. Hast slain
Deorham. That which was his
is now thine.”

“Oh !” Lancelot looked round.
“Castle and all? Well, that’s
handy. And that was Deor-
ham, was it? All right, one
of you nip off and tell the gang
the boss is coming home, hun-
gry . . . and bruised, too !”

“I will. Lord!” Alaric fled
for his horse and raced on
ahead.

The Shogleet contented it-
self with a modest canter,
finding the new movement in-
triguing. Lancelot was not im-
pressed.

“You’re shaking me to a
jelly,” he groaned. “Can’t we
go back to the other way?”

“This is more accurate. You
had better learn. You/ may
have to ride a real horse some
day.” Lancelot forgot to grum-
ble as they reached the court-
yard of the castle, and he
could appreciate the size of
the place. He slid off, and
stood agape at high rough-

scone walls and towers, their
slit-windows innocent of glass,
but with gay cloths trailing
from every vantage point. Ec-
tor approached, unwillingly,
to take the Shogleet’s bridle.
Lancelot objected at once.

“You can’t go off and leave
me, not now. What’ll I do? I
mean, you know more than
me about all the customs and
things.’’

“It will be quite all right,”
the Shogleet consoled him in
Galactic, ignoring the flabber-
gasted stares of the men-at-
arms who had drawn near.
“Just give orders. Tell them
what you want. I will join
you as soon as I can.”

It went with Ector to a
great low stable, where there
were many half-wild horses
and a great smell. As soon as
it could be alone^ it cast off
the horse-shape. It had given
a degree of thought to this,
and decided it was best to as-
sume some human-like form.
So, on its rapid transit through
the stables, courtyard and into
the great hall, it settled into
a small, dark-hued, manikin
shape, thinking to be less im-
pressive and thus less fright-
ening in that guise.

Trotting through the serfs
who were busy scattering
fresh rushes on the stone-slab
floor, it found Lancelot seated
at the head of a long, rude
table, on which more serfs
were arranging platters heap-
ed with hot food. He was deep
in conversation with an old,

rugged-looking, gray-bearded
man, but looked up as the
Shogleet came close and
scrambled on to the arm of
his chair.

WrpHIS is Gildas,” he said.

-I “Calls himself a senes-
chal. Sort of head-man. Been
telling me all about the prop-
erty.”

Gildas backed off warily.

“Now, sooth,” he muttered.
“I do believe thou art Lance-
lot, and this thy familiar.
What is it, a troll?”

“Lancelot,” the Shogleet
said, in Galactic. “Have you
forgotten? We are on a mis-
sion? You should be asking
Gildas for news of the emer-
gency.”

“Say, that’s right. I’d for-
gotten. It’s not every day a
man gets a barony.” He turn-
ed in his chair. “Draw near,
Gildas. There is nothing to
fear.”

“Thou sayest it well, Lord,”
Gildas growled, “but. I like it
not. A troll that stands and
parleys like a man. Still, it is
but part and parcel with the
strange things that have come
on this land but lately.”

“Ah, now, that’s what I
wanted to know about. What’s
going on? I have to know,
because I'm here to stop it.”
Gildas stepped back, trans-
formed from a sullen gray-
beard into an angry enemy.

“I knew it!” he roared. “I
knew thou wert false! I will
hail the men-at-arms, that

JOHN RACKHAM

they may cut thee down. Nay,
strike me dead an thou canst,
but I will say it.”

“Oh, lord!” Lancelot mut-
tered. “What now? For heav-
en's sake, man, I’m not going
to strike anybody dead. Not
again. I’ve had enough of that
for one day. Just get a grip
on yourself and tell me what
it’s all about.”

“Methinks yon troll doth
already know, and the ques-
tion is but a trap. Natheless,
I will tell. Ye wit well there
is but one great sin in this
land. It is hight ‘Change.’ The
wise ones tell us this is the
best of all worlds, and that it
is sin to think otherwise. So
all say, where it can be heard.
But who can say what a man
thinketh in his heart? To la-
bor and sweat and garner the
fruits of the land is the old
way, the honest way. But who
will labor and sweat when his
fields may be ploughed, sown,
aye, and garnered into his
barn, without he turn a hand?
This be a change that many
welcome.”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea
what you’re going on about,”
Lancelot confessed. “Don’t tell
me the sky is going to fall
over a few ploughed fields?
I was thinking of gathering
some of those lads out there
to ride with me to Camlan — ”

“Camlan !” Gildas leaped
back again, surprisingly spry
for one of his age. “Again I
say ye are false !” And he had
his mouth open to shout as

THE STAINLESS STEEL KNIGHT

Lancelot jumi>ed up and seiz-
ed him.

“Stop it!” he yelled. “I’m
getting sick of this double-
talk. Why the hell can’t you
come right out and say what
you mean?” He turned to the
Shogleet, with Gildas dangling
chokingly from his mailed
fists. “Can you make any sense
out of it? I think they’re all
stark raving mad here.”

The Shogleet eyed Gildas.
“Put him down,” it said.
“Now, what land is this, and
who is your king?”

“This is Brython,” Gildas
said, squeakily, “and our king
hight Cadman. Soon to be
Cadman of the Fiery Dragon,
in sooth. He dwells in Alban,
twenty miles south. If ye be
the wise troll, advise this your
master to ride to Cadman and
plead to aid, on our side!”
“I’m beginning to get it,”
Lancelot sighed “What’s Cam-
lan then?”

“Camlan is for Bors, King
of the Kellat, and our deadly
foe. Even now doth he call an
army of knights, to invade our
land and seize our dragon. To
destroy it, he claims, but many
suspect it is but to capture it
for his own use.”

“Oh, come now. A real dra-
gon?”

“It is sooth, Lord. I myself
have seen it, and my eyes were
weak for a day after. It is
truly a fearsome thing for an
enemy. But for us it be great
good. It is strange, and we all
fear it, but who can argue

against a full barn and tilled
fields, all without labor?"

66 A DRAGON which labors
-rV in the field? That would
be something really worth see-
ing, Lancelot. The tapes said
nothing of this.”

“A dragon!" Lancelot mur-
mured, dreamily. “That would
be right up my street. All
right, Gildas, we’ll leave the
question of politics for a bit.
Shove some of that grub my
way, would you? And pass
some tools.” Gildas frowned
at this.

“There are no eating imple-
ments in this culture, Lance-
lot," the Shogleet advised,
drawing on its studies. “Dag-
ger and fingers only.”

Before Lancelot could voice
his grumble, Gildas said, “Wilt
permit thy wives now, Lord?"

“My what? How do I come
to have wives?”

“They were Deorham's, are
now thine. They wait thy leave
to come to table."

"Good grief! Now I have a
couple of wives."

“Nay, Lord. Six."

Lancelot shrank into his
glittering armor. He cast an
appealing eye on the Shogleet.
“What do I do now? Six
wives! One w'o'uld be too
many.”

“Ask Gildas," the Shogleet
advised. “He will know. There
was nothing in the tapes about
such a situation, so I cannot
help you."

“Here a minute,” Lancelot
THE STAINLESS STEEL KNIGHT

gulped. “I have been long in
the grave and forget many
customs of this land. What
shall I do with these — wo-
men? What are they all for,
anyway? And why six?”
“Marry, Lord, but I under-
stand thee not. A man may
take as many wives as he
needs and can support, if he
be a knight. And what would
a wife be for, but to serve?
Still, it matters not, now. If
thou art truly for our cause,
then must eat and depart
forthwith. All is to hand. We
can fetch Alban by nightfall.”
“What, right away?”

“All is to hand,” Gildas re-
peated firmly. “Even this day
did Deorham make ready for
the journey, to join Cadman
and all the other great knights
of this land, against the Kel-
lat. Else thou wouldst not have
found him in the meadow,
where he did but try out his
armor and steed.” Lancelot
groaned and looked about fe-
verishly. The Shogleet, watch-
■ ing, saw him shudder.

“I’m up a tree this time. I
can’t face a twenty-mile drag,
not after what I’ve just had
from the Baron. I ache, I tell
you. But I don’t fancy all these
women hanging about either.
I’m caught both ways.”

“The Lady Phillipa hath the
healing touch,” Gildas offer-
ed. “If thou wilt shed thy
mail, Lord, she will attend
thee.” And he clapped his
hands before Lancelot could
stop him.

They came in at once. The
Shogleet suspected they had
been close at hand, listening.
At any rate, there was no need
to warn the Lady Phillipa that
her services were needed. A
large and robust woman of
some thirty years, she made at
once for the hapless knight
and, with Gildas assisting, had
him out of his mail as readily
as a mother undresses a child,
and with as little concern.

It was the Shogleet’s first
contact with women at close
quarters and it was intensely
interested in this new phe-
nomenon. What it found par-
ticularly puzzling was Lance-
lot’s obvious awkwardness, as
if he was afraid the females
might see the body that had
been built for him. This was
not the behavior-pattern that
it had traced in Lancelot in the
beginning. According to that,
he was lordly and quietly
compelling in the presence of
the opposite" sex. It began to
suspect that this, too, had
been part of the young man’s
fantasies. It was all very
strange.

HALF an hour later, on a
real horse, into the saddle
of which Lancelot had been
hoisted by a primitive block-
and-tackle arrangement and
three sweating serfs, the
young man led a great rout
from the castle courtyard. On
his arm, the Shogleet listened
keenly to the chatter of the
men around. A few were

mounted, most were afoot, and
they all were filled with en-
thusiasm for the battle ahead.
But, of the dragon, there
were divided opinions. Some
thought it a blessing,, a gift
from the gods to a deserving
country, but they were in a
minority. The rest devoutly
believed that it was evil. The
right and proper thing for a
man was to work or to fight,
they declared. What man could
do either, when a dragon did
both so much better than any
man? Not so, they said, and
this legendary knight was
come, for sure, to rid them
of it.

Lancelot, jogging along in
his armor, was acting and
talking in anything but a
knightly manner, but the
Shogleet paid him little heed.
Disguished under the mini-
strations of Lady Phillipa, it
had managed to help him with
doses of carefully tuned ener-
gy. The young man was as
good as new, except in spirit,
in which region he was badly
bruised.

“I shall never keep this up
for twenty miles,” he groan-
ed, as his teeth jarred and
clicked at every pace. “I’m a
nervous wreck, I tell you. If
this is knivht errantry, then
I’ve had it.” They made a
good twenty miles an hour,
and should have fetched Al-
ban in two hours. But it was
nearer five, and the sun low-
ering in the sky, before the
roofs of the city came in sight.

JOHN RACKHAM

Then the Shogleet recalled,
from its studies, the low level
of education consistent with
this culture. Few of these peo-
ple could count as far as twen-
ty. For them, forty was well-
nigh an infinite number.

Over the bridge and into
the narrow streets of Alban,
Lancelot was pushed into the
lead. The Shogleet sharpened
its senses for more informa-
tion about the dragon. There
were whispers on all sides
about the “knight with the
naked shield” and “how his
armor doth glitter, like sil-
ver,” but not a mention of the
mysterious beast. In the cen-
ter of the city they came to
the castle. The crowd of idle
sightseers gave way to a
great throng of men-at-arms,
knights, squires.

They came to the foot of a
great flight of steps.

“That’s it,” Lancelot said,
with resigned conviction.
“Just let me fall off right here.
I’m through."

But Alaric had spurred his
mount forward, just as a
tall, gray-headed man, with a
heavily - lined, strong face,
came to the head of the steps.

“ Your Majesty,” the squire
cried in a high but quite audi-
ble voice. “I am squire to this
knight. This day hath he slain
Deorham in a great battle.
Whereupon, and without stay
for rest, hath he ridden right
speedily, with this great com-
pany, to offer service with
thee against thine enemy.

THE STAINLESS STEEL KNIGHT

Your Majesty, this is Sir
Lancelot!”

The Shogleet could hear the
great gasp which ran through
the crowd at this awesome
name. Even the King himself
seemed to shrink a little.

“It is, indeed, a great hon-
or,” he said uneasily, “to have
such a great one return from
the shades to serve in our
cause. Dismount, Sir Lance-
lot. Approach and be welcom-
ed to our presence.” Lancelot
crawled wearily fronvthe sad-
dle. He stood on shaky legs,
looked up the steps and began
to climb.

But the Shogleet, with its
razor-keen senses, had caught
something highly irregular.
Alaric had gone on, to keep
one pace to the rear of Lance-
lot, while Ector stayed to hold
the horse.

“Ector!” the Shogleet hiss-
ed, becoming part-visible for
the purpose. “See you that
man in the brown jerkin and
the cap over his eyes, there
close by the knight in the fal-
con shield?” Ector peered, and
nodded.

“Mark him. Discover what
you can. When the moment is
ripe, have word with him. and
say Lancelot has need of him.
Have him come.”

“And if he will not come.
Lord?”

“Whisper in his ear this
word. It is a great magic, so
forget it not. The word is
‘Galactopol.’ Hearing it, he
will come.”

ECTOR repeated the word
fearfully, and went off
with the horse. The Shogleet
scurried up the steps, its curi-
osity-damping field going full
blast. Lancelot was wearily
explaining to King Cadman
that he had travelled far and
fast, and that all he wanted
to do, right then and there,
was to rest.

“They must be made of
steel and leather,” he com-
plained bitterly, in the cham-
ber that had been assigned to
him, as Alaric helped him un-
buckle his armor. “Believe it
or not, but that crowd down
there are just getting set for
an all-night session. Drinking,
carousing and eating. Moun-
tains of food. Entertainers
standing by. Women all over
the place. Don’t they ever get
tired?” The squire was sent
off for bread and wine and a
bowl of hot water, and the
Shogleet soon had Lancelot
easier in body. But his spirits
were well down.

“I’m a flop at this game,”
he gloomed. “All right, I’ve
turned up a dragon. But sup-
pose I can’t fight it? And sup-
pose I do? I still don’t know
what the emergency is all
about, and I’ve no idea how to
start looking. I’m a duff, I tell
you. Best thing I can do is go
back to Director Hugard and
turn in my badge.”
“Patience,” the Shogleet
counseled. “I think Ector may
have news for us. Ah, here
he is now.”

ECTOR had found his man.

Lancelot looked, indiffer-
ently.

“Who might you be?” he
asked.

“That’s a good question,”
the stranger replied crisply.
“I was going to ask the same
thing. Who the hell are you?
And what’s the big idea of
riding around in that fake
chrome - silicon - steel armor,
hey?”

“That’s it,” the Shogleet
nodded, shimmering into full
visibility. “That’s what I
heard you say, down there by
the steps.” The man in brown
stepped back carefully, blinked
a time or two and swallowed.

“I don’t believe it,” he said.
“I see it. I hear it. A little
brown pixy, with red eyes,
talking Galactic. But I don’t
believe it.”

“Hey!” Lancelot sat up,
painfully. “That’s a point, too.
You’re talking Galactic. Who
are you, anyway?”

“He is obviously a Galacto-
pol agent,” the Shogleet said
patiently. “The real point is,
why is he here? Why would
they send two agents?”

“Two agents?” The stran-
ger stared, then pushed his
cap back. “I'm beginning to
get it, I think. Heard of you,
haven’t I? Lancelot Lake?”
“That’s right. And you?”
“Oh, I’m just a third-level
sector man. Name’s Alfred
North. Pass myself off as a

' JOHN RACKHAM

journeyman blacksmith here.
It’s a living, with all the armor
about. That’s how I could spot
your stuff. Nothing here to
even scratch that. You’d be a
pay-off bet in a tourney.”

“No fear!” Lancelot said,
hastily. “I’ve had all I want of
that. But what is this all a-
bout? What’s the emergency?”
“It’s a dilly, all right.”
North fished out a case, of-
fered it. “Smoke?”

“Thanks!” Lancelot’s eyes
shone, until he recalled the
squires. “How about them,
then? Won’t they mind?”
“It'll scare them, but they’ll
write it off as magic. That’s
a handy way to cover up any-
thing you don’t understand.
That’s why they can take the
dragon so easily.”

“There really is a dragon,
then?”

“But surely. You mean you
didn’t know? It’s had me stop-
ped, I can tell you. I was
thinking of screaming for spe-
cial aid. How come you’re
here, if you don’t know about
it?”

“I gues3 I’m your special
aid. I only got here this mor-
ning, and I can’t seem to keep
still long enough to find out
anything that makes sense.”
North frowned, then shrug-
ged resignedly. “I suppose you
special boys have your own
methods. Anyway, I’d say you
have the right approach in
this case. We usually work
under cover, but this one isn't
like that at all. When the

alarm went off, I wasn’t both-
ered — ”

“That alarm,” the Shogleet
interrupted. “I am curious
about that. Is it some form
of automatic device?”

North sighed. “I was hop-
ing you’d go away, if I didn’t
pay any attention.- Ah, well.”
He inhaled thoughtfully. “You
see, when these planets are
colonized, they implant the
compatible beliefs as a dogma.
But, just to take care of any
sports, there’s a ritual, a form
of exorcism, that is triggered
off by any major change. And
that fires the alarm. Doesn’t
happen very often. It’s usu-
ally a gene-twist. Some kid
gets curious about the stars
up there, or begins to fiddle
about with experiments in
steam-pressure. That kind of
thing. But this one is dif-
ferent.”

“A real dragon?” Lancelot
asked, wide-eyed.

64nnHAT would be the day,”
A North grinned. Then he
sneaked a look at the Shogleet,
and his grin slipped a little.
“No,” he said, stubbing out
his smoke-tube. “If you think
back a couple of hundred
years, when they were terra-
forming this planet, they used
machinery. Big stuff. One gad-
get was a combined cultivator-
harvester. Thorium powered,
and just about everlasting.
They used hundreds of ’em.
And somebody goofed. One got
left behind, in a cave they

THE STAINLESS STEEL KNIGHT

were using for storage space.
Now, after all these years, one
of the local boys has found it.
He’s using it.”

“Hold on,” Lancelot object-
ed. “He wouldn’t know how.”

“That’s the hell of it. He
wouldn’t have to; I’ve check-
ed. The thing is run from a
mentrol — a sort of head-
band, with trimmings. You
put it on, and think your or-
ders, like ‘stop,’ ‘go,’ ‘right,’
‘left,’ ‘fast,’ and ‘slow.’ And
what more do you want? The
way I figure it, somebody must
have found the mentrol and
tried it on for size, and that
started the whole thing off.”

“Yeeow!” Lancelot gasped.
“He must have had the hell
of a fright when it came rum-
bling out of its cave. But it
all fits. The way they lap up
magic here, it wouldn’t be any
trouble for them to spot that
whoever wears the mentrol
controls the beast. Which is
right, anyway. Who owns it
now?”

“That's Sir Brian de Boyce.
Next to old Cadman, he’s the
big boy in these parts. The
way I heard it, one of his
freemen found the mentrol, so
Sir Brian eliminated him, and
took charge. And it’s ruining
the economy. There isn’t a
peasant in miles who’s put his
back into his job in months.
I’m stymied. I’m only a free-
man here. I can’t just charge
in and tell Sir Brian what to
do. But you can. You’re a
knight.”

“That’s all right,” Lancelot
mused, “but how do I get it
from him?”

“You’ll fight him for it, of
course.” Lancelot fell back.

“Oh, no ! I’m not having any
more of that,” he groaned.
“You didn’t see what Deor-
ham did to me. I can show you
the bruises — ”

“Come off it.” Noah was
curt. “If you took a stroll
down to the main hall right
now, you’d find that they’re
working out the list for the big
fight, in the morning. No, not
against Bors and his boys.
Against each other.”

“Eh? What for?”

“It’s the culture pattern.
Trial by combat. Knights fight
for rank, prestige. Cadman
wouldn’t dream of leading a
field of knights unless they
had all been graded by prow-
ess. That’s how it’s done. The
winners qualify; the losers
flunk out. I’ll bet you there’s
a dozen down there right now,
just aching to have a crack
at you. You can call yourself
Sir Lancelot. But they’ll want
you to prove it. And you can’t
refuse, either; if you chicken
out, your name will smell.
Even a serf will spit on you.”
“Oh lord !” Lancelot sat up,
jmd r»nt his head in his hands.
“I wish I’d never seen this
place. What the hell am I go-
ing to do?”

“Your best bet is to lash out
with a challenge to Sir Brian,
rio'ht away. If you’re lucky,
and he’s free to take you on,

JOHN RACKHAM

then all you have to do is chop
him down, and you’re top man
— and the mentrol is yours.
You’d better be quick. The
competition is fierce.”

1MTASQUERADING as a
■L*-!- horse again, the Shogleet
carried Lancelot through the
busy streets, early the next
morning. It was of the opinion
that Lancelot had been rea-

sonably fortunate. He had
drawn one strange knight
from the far west, called
Gnut, an unknown about
whom fantastic stories were

rife.

“Discounting the tales,” it
argued, “for these people have
only the vaguest ideas of accu-
racy, you are fortunate. You
will defeat Gnut, then Sir

Brian, and the mentrol will
be yours.”

Lancelot refused to be cheer-

ed. “I’m sick of this knight
business,” he muttered. “I
spend all my time in this
blasted metal strait- jacket,

jogging my guts out on a
horse, people bashing me
about. Now I’ve got to fight a
couple of guys I’ve never seen
before. And if I win what hap-
pens? Every knight for miles
around will be waiting to have
a bash at me to show how good
he is. And they talk about
competition in a dynamic cul-
ture! They don’t know what
they’re talking about.”

They were turning the cor-
ner, by a high-roofed house.
The Shogleet was pondering

on the unspoken implication
in Lancelot’s words. He was
actually so low in spirit as to
entertain the thought that he
might not win! Then there
came a gentle hail from the
balcony, and a gay-colored
scrap of silk fluttered through
the sunlight, to catch on the
tip of Lancelot’s lance.

“Tis a troth. Lord,” Alaric
said. “Wouldst have me seek
out its owner?” Then he ex-
plained, as Lancelot was com-
pletely fogged. He would enter
the house find out who had
tossed the silk, ask for her
glove, and Lancelot would car-
ry it into battle. “An thou art
victorious, Lord, the hand
which fits the glove is thine.
It is the custom.”

“But I’ve got six wives,
now!”

“What of that?” Alaric de-
manded. “Who knoweth what
treasures may hap, today? I
know not of Gnut, but Sir
Brian is a wonderly rich man
— and all can be thine.”
“Good grief!” Lancelot
shuddered. “Doesn’t a man
ever settle down with just one
wife here?”

“To wed, thou meanest?
Marry, that is a different mat-
ter. That is the way of a man
who is old, and would put an
end to glory and adventure.”
“Precious few of these lads
will live so long,” Lancelot
mumbled. “The way they go
at it. What do you call ‘old’?”
Alaric frowned. “I can but
guess, sire. A great many

THE STAINLESS STEEL KNIGHT

years, certainly. As many as
thirty."

The Shogleet was amused
by Lancelot’s sudden silence.
It knew he was thirty-three.
But there was food for
thought, too. If it was rare for
a knight to live longer than
thirty years, then this would
be a self-control mechanism
tjo keep down the numbers of
the non-productive to within
the capacity of an agricultural
community. Knighthood, it
seemed, served the multiple
function of entertainment,
hazard, prestige and the skim-
ming off of the restless few.

But the wives were an en-
igma. The Shogleet determine
ed to question North at the
first opportunity.

THE tournament field was
riot of color. Gay streamers
flirted with the breeze from
the pavilions at either end.
Each pennant was a knight.
Tabarded heralds carried ros-
ters. The chattering populace
was accommodated on rude
plank seats along either length
of the field. In the privileged
center of one side was the
royal stand, thick with drapes.

Alaric was kept busy point-
ing out the various celebrities,
reeling off their reputations,
their possessions, their pedi-
grees, until even the Shogleet
marvelled a little at such a
memory. Then the boy saw Sir
Brian’s pennant. He indicated
it.

“His lands are the most spa-

cious in Brython, second only
to the King. Vast herds, great
forests and three castles.” _

“How many wives?"

“As I heard it last, sire,
eleven.”

“Oh, great!" Lancelot sag-
ged. “That’s a hell of an in-
centive to win. But if I don’t
kill him, then he’ll kill me!"

Bugles rent the chatter, and
set the pennants rising and
falling. The contest began.
Lancelot watched gloomily.

“Look at that!" he mutter-
ed to the Shogleet. “Ton and
a half of raving insanity, trav-
elling at about thirty miles an
hour. Double it, because the
other lunatic is doing the
same. No wonder they count
you out if you fall. By the
time you stop that with your
belly and fall about five feet
onto hard ground, plus all the
hardware, it’s no wonder they
don’t get up to argue.”

The pennants rose and fell.
Trumpets blared. Brass-lung-
ed heralds told the tally of
victor and vanquished. Then
up went a barred black pen-
nant, with a gold spot. A her-
ald roared.

“Sir Gnut, of the Westland
. . . to meet Sir Lancelot!”

Alaric broke out a pure
white pennant, and the chal-
lenge was shouted back.

“Sir Lancelot to meet Sir
Gnut!"

The great surf-roar of the
crowd was stilled as that fab-
ulous name spread from lip to
lip. Lancelot settled himself in

JOHN RACKHAM

the saddle, and put out a hand
for the lance which Alaric
held ready. But the Shogleet
had already spotted Gnut, at
the other end. A smallish man,
in all-black mail, on a small,
wiry stallion, he looked fast.

“Leave the lance,” it order-
ed. “Prepare to use your
sword.” It cantered on to the
field before Lancelot could ar-
gue “Now sit firm. Fend off
his point with your shield,
then cut him down with your
sword.”

“Who, me?” Lancelot chat-
tered. “How the blazes can I,
with you bouncing me about
like that?” A great yell went
up from the crowd as the gal-
lant knight flung his arms
about the neck of his steed to
keep from falling off.

The Shogleet halted. The
warden’s flag fell. Sir Gnut
went into his gallop at once,
head well down, crouching
over his crouched lance. Lan-
celot fumbled for his sword.
The Shogleet braced itself.
Lance met shield with a rend-
ing crash, and splintered into
matchwood. The Shogleet
pranced backward and round,
to keep Lancelot in the saddle.
Gnut was equally nimble, toss-
ing away the ruined lance and
whipping out his blade. In and
out like a snake, he battered
Lancelot, again and again,
rocking him in his saddle until
he was good and angry.

“All right!” he roared. “You
asked for it!” And he stood
in his stirrups, waiting for the

THE STAINLESS STEEL KNIGHT

black knight to charge in just
once more. Then the Shogleet
felt him slash down, viciously
. . . and there was a shocked
Aaah! from the crowd.

“Serve him right,” Lance-
lot growled as they trotted
from the field, and the serfs
ran on to carry off the sliced
remains of Sir Gnut. “Let’s
hope that made Sir Brian stop
and think a bit.”

BACK in his tent there was
a surprise waiting for
Lancelot.

The Shogleet, poking its
horse-head through the tent
flap, saw a slim, girlish fig-
ure, with her glossy gold hair
done in gleaming braids about
her head. This was the young-
est female it had seen. It stud-
ied her with great interest.
Her complexion was curiously
translucent, so that the flush
of blood in her cheek was
clearly visible. And her voice
was soft and low, as she greet-
ed Lancelot. Alaric, as usual,
was on hand with explana-
tions.

“This is the Lady Jessica,
sire. She who threw thee the
silk which thou accepted.”

“I pray,” she said, softly,
“that thou’rt willing to ac-
cept my glove as a gage, Sir
Knight.” Timidly she held out
a slim hand. Lancelot took it
as if it was an eggshell. The
Shogleet was completely baf-
fled by his beet-red face and

the glazed look in his eye. This
was a side to Lancelot that it
had not seen before.

The Lady Jessica had to
stand on tiptoe to put her face
to Lancelot's. Then she went
even more red in the face, and
whispered, “I pray that thou
wilt be triumphant, Sir
Knight — for my sake!”

Then she was gone, leaving
Lancelot staring into vacancy
and rubbing his cheek. North
pushed his way into the tent,
grinning.

“Nice work, Lake,” he said.
“Not much style, but you
chopped him down quick.”

“Here — ” Lancelot said,
abstractedly. “Something I
wanted to ask you. This busi-
ness about wives. I mean, I
won six from Deorham. Lord
knows how many Gnut had,
but Sir Brian has eleven.
What do I do with all them?”

“Ah!” North chuckled.
“You’re a bit mixed, there.
The word should rightly be
‘housewives.’ They’re a kind
of high-class servant. When
you think about it, there isn’t
much else a high-born lady
can do, except run the domes-
tic side, while the menfolk
are busy battling. They have
their duties, you see, like
keeping track of the hired
help, tending to the kitchen,
the bedchamber, the linen —
that sort of thing. They tend
to the man of the house, too,
of course, and entertain his
guests. But they’re strictly
property. No need to be both-

ered, if that's what you’re
worried about.”

Lancelot’s face went red
again. “So there isn’t any reg-
ular getting married and set-
tling down, then?”

“Oh, sure, but that’s a dif-
ferent thing. For the knight
who is past his prime and
wants to settle down. Retire.
You know. He usually selects
some old place out in the
sticks, turns in the rest of his
property to the King, to be a
prize for some contender, and
settles in to raise a family.
More squires and ladies, and
the whole thing starts all over
again. Not many get that far.
It’s too dull for them. Why?”
Lancelot was saved his
stammering explanation by
the sound of a herald from the
field. Sir Brian’s pennant had
gone up.

“Take the lance this time,”
the Shogleet decided, studying
Sir Brian.

“Good grief!” Lancelot had
been looking, too. “See the size
of him! No wonder he’s the
top man in these parts. He’s
going to take a bit of knocking
out.”

The Shogleet pricked up its
ears at the sudden change in
Lancelot’s tone, but it had
more urgent matters to con-
sider. “Couch your lance firm-
ly,” it advised. “Aim for his
midriff.” The flag fell. They
began to go forward, from a
canter into a gallop, Lancelot
manfully sitting forward and
forgetting to complain. The

JOHN RACKHAM

mighty Sir Brian thundered
toward them, his lance glitter-
ing in the sun. At the very
moment of impact, the Shog-
leet stiffened, rearing on its
haunches to keep Lancelot in
the saddle. There was a deaf-
ening double clang from the
shields, a wheeze from Lance-
lot as the wind was punched
out of him, the screech of tor-
tured metal and a gruesome
gargle from Sir Brian.

Then, despite all the Shog-
leet could do, it felt Lancelot
lifted and dragged from the
saddle.

SKIDDING furiously to a
stop, it wheeled to look.
There was Lancelot, on foot,
dazedly clutching the haft of
the lance. The other end, with
its razor tip, had stabbed
through Sir Brian’s shield, his
armor and Sir Brian himself,
and stuck out a hand’s breadth
on the far side.

With a grunting effort, Lan-
celot tore the lance free. He
staggered back as the Shogleet
cantered up, to kneel so that
he csould remount. The crowd
was stunned into momentary
silence. Then it went wild.

Even King Cadman looked
shaken, as they cantered pa^t
the royal stand for the salute
and accolade. Back in the tent,
Lancelot eased himself out of
his helmet and sat.

“That’s me,” he said flatly.
“I’m through, done, finished.”
North pushed through the
tent-flap just in time to dis-

THE STAINLESS STEEL KNIGHT

agree with the last word.

“There's still the dragon,”
he said. “That shouldn’t be
too hard, now that you've won
the mentrol. Nice bout, that
was. Just as well you’re not
staying in these parts. The
rest of the boys don’t stand a
chance against you.”

“It’s the superior metal,
of course,” the Shogleet com-
mented, poking itsJhorsehead
into the tent. North jumped a
clear foot off the ground,
knocking his head on the
wooden spar of the tent.

“Talking horses, now,” he
breathed. “Is this routine
equipment for you Prime G-
men?”

“Forget that,” Lancelot
snapped. “What about this
dragon? Let’s get it over with,
and we’ll see whether I’m
staying here or not.”

North eyed him thoughtful-
ly. “I suggest you play it this
way. There should be a coffee-
break, soon. You get an audi-
ence with Cadman. Tell him
this dragon is a great evil.
You’ve come to kill it and,
once done, you'll return to the
shades. That way, everybody’ll
be shut up. All right?”
“Sounds simple enough. But
tan I kill the thing?”

“I'll fix that,” North said
briskly, “once I have the men-
trol.” He glanced out of the
tent and chuckled. “Here they
come now.”

“Who?”

“Sir Brian’s crowd. His
lieges, turning themselves in.

You want the lad with the
gadget. Never mind the rest.”

“Suppose . . said Lancelot,
in a tone that made the Shog-
feet prick up its ears at once.
“Suppose I was staying here,
and I didn’t want all these
retainers hanging about —
what’s the routine proced-
ure?”

“Nothing to it.” North gave
him that thoughtful look
again. “You just manumit
them. Give ’em their freedom.
They’ll just go off and sign
up with somebody else. It’s
not wise, though, because you
couldn’t run an estate without
staff, and they work for their
keep.”

“That’s a point,” Lancelot
admitted. He went to receive
his spoils with a pensive air.

Late that afternoon, with
the awed populace keeping a
safe distance, the Shogleet
bore Lancelot, following North
who was on foot, to the mead-
ow where the monster “slept.”
North had the mentrol in his
hand.

“This shouldn’t be any
trouble,” he said. “A bit of
expert sabotage, and it will be
all over. There she is, folks.”

IT was easy to see why the
peasants had dubbed it a
dragon. Its sectioned body, all
of fifty feet long, hugged the
ground, rising to a twenty-
foot high hump in front.
There a single head-lamp grave
it a one-eyed, evil look.

“That front scoop,” North

explained, “can be set to any
level you like, and there are
controls which can be adjusted
so that the stuff is processed,
inside. Got a rudimentary
‘brain’ — enough to identify
and reject organic matter
that’s still alive. It wouldn’t
touch a man, even if you tried
to make it. Not that any of the
locals would have the nerve
to chance it. Nor do I blame
them. Incidentally, it proc-
esses wastes and makes its
own bags and fertilizer, all in
one operation. That’s not do-
ing the economy any good,
either, believe me. I’ve been
stuck because I couldn’t lay
my hands on this little gadget.
But now I have it, I know
that it’s immobile. Nothing
can happen until I put it on
my head. Come on.”

. But the Shogleet had other
idcES

“Lancelot,” it said. “You
had better go back. Warn the
audience not to come too near.
And there is someone you
would wish to see, I think?”

“That’s right.” Lancelot
slid down eagerly, and went
clanking back.

“You’re a smart animal,”
North said, shrewdly. “What’s
on your mind?”

“Answer me a question,
first. I gather that there is
a sort of personal polarity, an
attraction and an attachment
between humans of opposite
sexes, if certain other factors
are favorable. It involves such
activities as marrying, set-

JOHN RACKHAM

tling down, raising a family
— all of which are concepts
which I do not quite under-
stand. But I believe such re-
lationships are not amenable
to reason. Yes?”

“If you mean that there’s
neither sense nor reason in a
guy who’s in love, that’s dead
right,” North chuckled. “Love
makes a fool of a man. There’s
never been a cure for it yet.”
“That is what I thought.
Thank you. Now, it is not
enough that the dragon be
destroyed. It must be seen to
be destroyed. Impressively.”
“It’s a good point. What’s
on your mind?”

The Shogleet proceeded to
tell him, in rapid, explicit de-
tail. North’s eyes widened.

“I can do it, sure, if that’-s
the way you want it. I hope
you know what you’re doing,
that's all.”

He hurried off across the
meadow, to disappear into the
gaping jaws of the cultivator.
Lancelot came, clanking back.
He had already mounted by
the time North returned.

“Let’s get it over with,” he
said impatiently, dropping his
visor. “I might as well tell
you that, as soon as I’ve fin-
ished with this thing, I’m re-
tiring from Galactopol. I’m
through. Now, what do I do?”
“It’s all fixed,” North said
dryly. “I’ll get well clear, then
I’ll put this on and make it
look as if you two are battling.
When you’ve had enough, you
bash it with your sword.”

THE STAINLESS STEEL KNIGHT

“Fat lot of good that’s go- .
ing to do !”

“I told you, it’s all fixed.
Keep an eye out for a yellow
danger-plate. It’s marked
‘DRIVE - UNIT SAFETY
COVER.' Just hit that. That’s
all.”

The Shogleet broke into a
gentle canter. Lancelot drew
his sword. The long, gleaming
machine suddenly broke into
loud and grumbling life, its
great jaws agape. With a
growl of gears, it moved and
swung its great head round,
like a humped serpent seeking
prey. Then the headlight lit
up, sending out a bright beam.

“You know,” Lancelot jerk-
ed, as the Shogleet swerved
to chase the lumbering ma-
chine, “this isn’t such a bad
place, after all. I mean, once
you get away from this armor-
plated business. I think I’ll
retire. I own all Sir Brian’s
lands now. I could settle down,
take life easy — ”

“But you are a Prime G-
man, Lancelot. It is your duty
to return to Headquarter’s
and report the successful com-
pletion of your mission.”

“North will take care of
that for me.”

“But you don’t really belong
here.”

“What’s that got to do with
it? It’s a free country, isn’t
it?” Lancelot waved his sword
valiantly, and the Shogleet
swerved suddenly, so that the
tip of the blade struck the
yellow panel.

THE bang was enough to
impress even the Shogleet.
It was very busy, for a few
fractionated seconds, warding
off blast, radiation and chunks
of flying debris. Then there
was a ringing silence. In a
thick haze of settling dust, it
turned, scrambled up out of
the hole and crept over the
torn and ruptured earth to
where North was peering,
open-mouthed, from a shelter-
ing bankside. Of the Brythons
there was nothing to be seen
but the puffs of dust from
their flying heels.

“You look all right,” North
gasped, “but what about him?”
“He is stunned, and in tem-
porary fugue. It will pass. If
you would hang the mentrol
on my saddle, we will be leav-
ing. You can clear up the odd
details?”

“Sure, I can handle those.
You’re leaving right now?”
“I think it would be wise.

Lancelot seems to have formed
one of those attachments, for
a certain young lady. He in-
tended to remain here per-
manently. That would have
been unwise, I understand?”

“Dead right,” North grin-
ned, but there were grim un-
dertones. “With what he’s got,
and you along, he would be
‘Change’ in a big way. That
wouldn’t do. I’d have to inter-
fere. And that might be
nasty.”

“Yes, that is what I thought.
It is better this way.”

“Just what are you, any-
way — a sort of guardian
angel?”

“You might say that, yes,”
the Shogleet nodded, and set
off to gallop the long trail,
back to the ship.

But it was still curious. It
wondered just what Director
Hugard would say when Lan-
celot got back.

END

Kangaroo Quiz

This is a quiz with something in its pocket. Try the prob*
lem below, then hop to p. 108 for the answer. There you’ll
find some surprising information about the quiz — and about
you .

o o o

Problem: Without raising your pencil from the paper, con*

nect all the above points with four straight lines.

66 JOHN RACKHAM

IF • Short Story

HATED TO SEE
THAT FELLOW
KIDNAP OUR GIRLS,
STEAL OUR MONEY,
WRECK OUR HOMES
— IT WAS ALL
I COULD DO TO KEEP
FROM SCOLDING
HIM ABOUT
IT

DOORMAT WORLD

by j. t. McIntosh

After w a t c h i n g the
stranger drag Rosie Ash-
win the length of Main Street,
screaming her head off, Bill
Garland, the town’s Law En-
forcement Officer, turned to
his cronies and said : “Did you
see that? I don’t mind telling
you, it was all I could do to
stop myself going right out
there in the street and telling
the stranger to let Rosie
alone!”

“He doesn’t mean any
harm,” said Taft Barker un-
easily. There were still a lot
of people in Winsafton who
preferred to ascribe anything
the stranger did to mere ex-
uberance.

“Sooner or later, Bill Gar-
land,” said Sam Basch, who
didn’t, “you’re going to have
to do something about that
guy. You’re the LEO.”

Garland pretended not to
hear that.

The stranger had Winsaf-
ton pretty near the end of its
tether. Gradually he had
taken complete control of the
town. Now he seemed to spend
most of his time thinking up
new, more capricious, more
outrageous ways of exercis-
ing his power.

The stranger had a perfect-
ly good name, Ed Ramsay,
but nobody in Winsafton ever
used it except to his face.
“Stranger” meant “colonist”
these days. There were seldom
enough colonists around for it
to be necessary to specify the
one you meant.

Few colonists returned to
Earth. When they did they
usually came to some town
where they had family ties,
where cousins, uncles, aunts,
nephews and nieces still lived.
But the stranger apparently
had no connections on Earth,
certainly not in Winsafton.
Every day a dozen people
asked resentfully: “What did
he have to come here for, any-
way?” It must have been a

OOORMAT WORLD

rhetorical question. There was
never any answer.

At first he merely pushed
people around the way re-
turned colonists always did.
When he began to realize just
how push-aroundable the peo-
ple of Winsafton were, how-
ever, he began to make his
early behavior look like old-
fashioned gallantry.

He picked on the best house
in Winsafton, the Goodman
place, and just moved in. Well,
what could the Goodmans do?
They could hardly throw him
out bodily. They just had to
put up with him. And at first
everybody but the Goodmans
snickered and said it served
the Goodmans right for hav-
ing the showiest plaee in
town.

People snickered even more
when it became known, as
such tilings always become
known in nothing flat, that
the stranger had pulled Sally
Goodman into his bedroom one
night and kept the door lock-
ed until next morning.

There was no jealous lover
to get mad about it. Sally was
well on in her thirties and
hadn’t been pretty even at
eighteen. It seemed a good
joke on the Goodmans that the
stranger had not only elected
to use their house as his own
but also regarded their daugh-
ter as part of the furnishings.

THEY stopped snickering
when the stranger casually
tossed Sally aside and started

helping himself to any pretty
women who caught his eye.
And to anything else he fan-
cied. After all, you never knew
it wouldn’t be your own wife
next. Or it might even be your
car or your house.

It was Hank Hawk’s new
Chrysler that the stranger
eventually took, only two
hours after dragging Rosie
Ashwin into his lair at the
Goodman place and slamming
the door. Hawk’s complaints
to the Law Enforcement Offi-
cer were bitter.

“Well, we don’t want to go
off half-cocked about this,
Hank,” said the LEO cau-
tiously. “Maybe he’s only bor-
rowed your car.”

“I didn't say he could bor-
row it. He stole it.”

“Now, you can’t go around
saying things like that. Hank,
even about a stranger. He nev-
er even spoke to you, did he?
So maybe he thought you
wouldn’t mind.”

“I want my car back !” said
Hank obstinately.

“Then why don’t you just
take it back?”

,“How can I do that? The
stranger knocked Bob Good-
man all the way downstairs
once, when he’d ordered fried
chicken for dinner and got
steak instead. I doift want to
take any chances. I don’t see
why I should. You’re the Law
Enforcement Officer, not me.”
“Sure, Hank,” said Garland
soothingly, “but I can’t do a
thing until I know a law’s

been broken. As of now, all I
know is, the stranger borrow-
ed your Chrysler. That ain’t
against the law.”

“I want my car back !” Hank

Qrrpamprf

“Then take it back, Hank.”
“You’re scared of the stran-
ger,” Hank said bitterly.

“Now, there’s no call to be
abusive. Hank. Run along
now, and come to me when
you have a genuine complaint.”
Hank raised his fists to
heaven in frustration.

IN this way the LEO man-
aged for a long time to do
nothing whatever about the
stranger and his actions. How-
ever, as time went on, Gar-
•and became uneasily conscious
that sooner or later he might
be forced to speak severely to
the stranger. This he was re-
luctant to do. The stranger
was all too liable to spit to-
bacco juice at him. It wasn’t
good for a LEO’s prestige and
authority to have tobacco juice
spat at him.

Yet more and more people
were starting to talk like
Hank Hawk. There was, for
example, the storekeeper who
said the stranger now owed
$3,216.58 and had shown nei-
ther inclination nor ability to
pay a cent. There was Wesley
Coleman, who bumped into the
stranger as Coleman emerged
from his own front gate. The
stranger immediately threw
stones at Coleman’s house,
breaking every single front

j. t. McIntosh

window. There was the truck
driver who was unable to pre-
vent the stranger denting
Hank Hawk's Chrysler against
his truck. The stranger not
only knocked the truck driver
down, he found a can of yel-
low paint on the truck, tore
the truck driver’s pants to
ribbons and poured the paint
on his naked belly. Everybody
agreed that this was rude.

As Law Enforcement Offi-
cer, Garland was sheriff, po-
lice chief, police force, district
attorney and public prosecu-
tor rolled into one. There was
no one to whom to pass the
buck. If anybody did anything
about the stranger, it would
have to be the LEO.

Garland was so concerned
over this that he seriously
considered emigrating. He got
as far as reading pamphlets
about sixteen of the forty-
three available colonies. Then
he realized something he should
have seen at once. On any one
of those forty-three pioneer
worlds the entire population
would consist of people like
the stranger.

He dismissed the possibility
of emigrating from his mind.
There remained, of course,
suicide . . .

The trouble was, the stran-
ger got worse every day.
Although he didn’t appear to
give a damn for anybody or
anything, the pattern of his
behavior showed clearly
enough that from the moment
he arrived in Winsafton he

had been trying things to see
if he’d get away with them.
When he did, he’d try some-
thing a little more extreme.

At first when he took things
on credit there had been at
least a pretense that he was
going to pay eventually. Later
he bullied people into saying
they’d presented the things to
him as gifts. Eventually he
simply took what he wanted
without explanation or prom-
ise.

His caveman tactics witr
women, too, started quietly
with Sally Goodman, extended
to young, unmarried girls who
were far too timid to describe
publicly and in detail exactly
what had happened to them
and complain about it, and
gradually spread to any fe-
male the stranger happened
to fancy.

TIE limit was reached when
the stranger arrived at a
wedding and carried off the
bride, pretty little Lucy Smith,
the instant she became Lucy
Jaffray. It was no good talk-
ing about droit de seigneur
to citizens of Winsafton. This,
they felt, was going too far.

Unable to stall any more,
Garland organized a posse of
all the men who had least
reason to love the stranger
— Lucy’s father Tom Smith,
Harry Jaffray, Hank Hawk,
the truck driver, the store-
keeper, Wesley Coleman, half
a dozen others. They called at
the Goodman place.

DOORMAT WORLD

The stranger came out to
stand on the porch and look
at them.

He was a big man, but no
bigger than Garland or the
truck driver. A stronger sun
than Sol had burned his face
so brown it was almost pur-
ple. He was untidily dressed
in an off-the-peg suit he had
taken from the local tailor —
without, of course, paying for
it — and there was egg on his
chin.

“Well?” he said, grinning
wolfishly at them. His act
could be as corny as he liked.
Nobody was going to laugh
at him.

Garland cleared his throat.
“Mr. Ramsay,” he said, “Win-
safton is a peaceable little
town. In my ten years as Law
Enforcement Officer, all I’ve
ever had to deal with, except
for the Saturday night drunks,
has been one case of justifiable
homicide and three of theft.
We’re proud of this record,
and—”

“Why was the homicide jus-
tifiable?” the stranger asked,
suddenly interested.

“Husband shot a man who
assaulted his wife. You rea-
lize, Mr. Ramsay, that if any
one of six or seven men shot
you dead, they’d go free.”

“Six or seven!” the stran-
ger roared suddenly, affront-
ed. “Hell, I been here a month !
It must be at least thirty.”

As he yelled at them, the
whole posse took an involun-
tary step backwards. The

stranger took a step forward.
“Say, if anybody has any com-
plaint against Ed Ramsay,
he’s come to the right place.
Let’s hear what you’ve all got
to say.”

He stepped down from the
porch. The group hurriedly
rearranged itself, everybody
trying to get as far away from
the stranger as possible. Cole-
man was unlucky. He bumped
into the truck-driver and
couldn’t get any further back.

“You,” said the stranger,
standing so close to Coleman
that their breaths mingled.
“Have you got something
against me?”

Coleman took a deep breath.
His voice came out in a high
whine. “You broke all my
windows !”

“Well, it’s summer, ain’t it?”

“Yes, but—”

“You want plenty of fresh
air, don’t you?”

“Yes, but — "

“Want me to sue you for
deliberately running into me
and trying to knock me down?”

“I didn’t deliberately — ”

“I say you did. And no-
body’s going to disagree with
me.”

Coleman gulped and made
no answer.

“Would you like to with-
draw your complaint?” the
stranger asked, clenching his
large, knotted right hand and
brandishing it under Cole-
man’s nose.

“I would,” said Coleman
hastily. “Very much.”

j. t. McIntosh

“Okay,” said the stranger.
“Your apology’s accepted. Get
the hell out of here.”

Coleman scuttled off, his
ears red, not looking back.

NEXT the stranger stepped
up to the truck-driver.
“Have you something you
want to say?”

“I’ve still got patches of
yellow paint on my stomach !”
said the truck-driver indig-
nantly.

“What do you want, the
second coat?”

“No, I . . . No, I . . . I just
wanted to tell you . . .”
“You’ve told me.”

The truck-driver made off
rapidly after Coleman.

Garland saw what was hap-
pening but was powerless to
prevent it. The posse had felt
strong and resolute when there
were more than a dozen of
them. Now as men left, one
after another, those who re-
mained became more and more
uneasy and less willing to
stand up to Ramsay.

"You. Who are you?” the
stranger demanded.

“I’m Harry Jaffray. It was
my wife you — ”

The stranger ehuckled.“Sure
boy, I know what you want
to know. Very natural.” He
winked, slapped Jaffray’s
shoulder, whispered into his
ear and pushed him away.

Curiously enough, it was
Sam Basch, who had never
had any direct cause to hate
Ramsay, who stood up to him.

DOORMAT WORLD

“We don’t like you,” he said
bluntly. “Go away.”

“You want me to push your
nose out of the back of your
head, maybe?”

“No. That wouldn’t make
me like you any better.”

The stranger looked Sam
Basch over. Once Sam had
been a very powerful man,
but Sam was sixty-one now.
He was beginning to stoop a
little and he limped slightly.

“Old man,” said the stran-
ger, “you know what’ll hap-
pen when I hit you ?”

“No,” Sam admitted.

“You do now,” said the
stranger, and shot out his fist
like a piston. Sam Basch took
it right on the belly-button,
and shut up like a jackknife.

That was the end of the
discussion. The three who re-
mained picked Sam up, dusted
him off, and wouldn’t let him
go after the stranger, who had
disappeared into the house.

"If I was only thirty -years
younger . . .” Sam gasped,
holding his middle.

“But you’re not,” said Gar-
land regretfully. For a mo-
ment of wild hope he had
thought he was going to be
able to pass the buck to Sam
Basch (who, he now remem-
bered, had nearly emigrated
once). But Sam was too old.
And the stranger was too
tough.

No, there was nothing for
it now but to keep out of the
stranger’s way and not catch
him at anything. So long as

the LEO did that, he could
pretend that Ramsay hadn’t
done anything.

WHEN the second colonist
arrived in Winsafton, the
town for a few hours was
close to panic.

It was very rare indeed for
colonists to visit Earth. The
emigration regulations were
strict and unequivocal. Any-
body who wanted to emigrate
was told bluntly that he could
either go or stay, but he had to
make up his mind one way or
the other once for all time.
And in all the colonies there
was so much to do, and so
much more opportunity than
there had been on Earth for
centuries, that few people had
any time to be homesick and
bemoan the fact that the emi-
gration authorities wouldn’t
let them go back to Earth.

Inter-galactic travel was so
expensive and demanded so
much organization that no in-
dividual could actually pay for
his passage, any more than
any one person could pay for
a country’s national defense
Consequently individuals did
not decide for themselves that
they’d leave Earth for the col-
onies or return from a colony
to Earth. They submitted
their cases to a board which
considered each case on its
merits.

Since Earth was still the
leading manufacturing planet
Earth made most of the gal-
axy’s spaceships. They left

Earth crammed with emi-
grants, and not one of them
in ten ever returned. They
were used thereafter for inter-
galactic trade, not for ferrying
back malcontents to Earth.

The case of the stranger in
Winsafton was therefore un-
usual; and the arrival of a
second colonist in the same
small town at the same time
was even more unusual.

The people of Winsafton
weren’t worried for long, how-
ever. It soon got around that
the newcomer was Jim Arlen,
Hugh Arlen’s youngest boy,
who had been born and
brought up in Winsafton.

That made all the differ-
ence, of course. Everybody
remembered Jim Arlen, a
tough but likeable youngster
who had been chased out of
every fruit orchard in the dis-
trict at one time or other.

“Let’s see,” people said,
scratching their heads, “young
Jim must be — why, he must
be thirty-five now.”

“All of that,” others agreed.
“Time flies, doesn’t it?”

It was Sam Basch, not Bill
Garland, who went to see Jim
Arlen at the town’s one hotel.

“Hi, Jim,” he said. “Re-
member me? I shot you full
of buckshot once.”

“Nobody ever shot me full
of buckshot,” Jim replied. “If
you shot at me, you missed.”
Basch sighed. “I never was
much of a shot. Pity. There’s
somebody in town who needs
shooting right now.”

j. t. McIntosh

“You mean Ed Ramsny?”
Jim grinned. “I’ve heard
about him.”

Sam Basch wanted to know
one thing before he talked to
Jim Arlen about Ramsay.
“Why’d you come back, Jim?”

Jim was as big as Ed Ram-
say, a little younger and not
so heavily tanned. He still had
the easy grin Sam remem-
bered.

“It seems my father still
owns a big plot of land north-
east of town,” Jim said. “We
never gave it much thought
when we emigrated. We tried
to sell it, but nobody would
buy. Now it seems there’s
some trouble over this land.
The board on Zukeen sent me
back to straighten out the
mess and report on some new
agricultural equipment while
I’m here.”

Basch nodded. “So you’ll be
going back soon?”

“In a couple of months, I
reckon.”

“You've heard about Ram-
say? You know him, maybe?”

“Hell, no. He comes from
Benvice and I’m from Zukeen.
Never met anybody from Ben-
vice. Don’t know much about
the place.”

“The fact is, Jim, Ramsay’s
been terrorizing the town.”

“I’ve heard that. I don’t see
how.”

SAM explained. As he did
so, Jim’s smile became a
puzzled frown.

“I don’t get it,” he said at

DOORMAT WORLD

last. “You mean he did all this
and nobody stopped him?”
“Nobody tried to ’cept me.
He gave me a poke in the guts
and that was that.”

“I still don’t get it. He’s
just one man. How can one
man have a whole town lick-
ing his boots?”

“You were pretty young
when you left here, Jim. You
weren’t old enough to look
around you and do any think-
ing. Don’t you know Earth’s
been sending out colonists for
hundreds of years?”

“Sure, but what’s that got
to do with it?”

“You were a pretty tough
family, Jim, you and your
folks and your brother. I
bailed your father out of jail
two or three times, and as for
your mother . . . well. We
won’t go into that. Point is,
you were all pretty hard to
handle. Tell me, Jim, are you
known as a tough family on
Zukeen?”

Jim grinned. “Hell, no.
Solid citizens, the Arlens.
Hardly ever in jail, any of us.
The old man’s a counselor.
Even my brother hasn’t been
in any trouble since he shot
his father-in-law, and that
was five years ago.”

“Well, Jim, Earth isn’t like
the colonies. For centuries
anybody with any courage,
determination or imagination
has emigrated. It’s still pos-
sible to make a fortune in the
colonies. It hasn't been pos-
sible here on Earth since the

early twentieth century. Nat-
urally anybody with any initi-
ative emigrates. And this has
been going on for hundreds
of years.”

Jiln nodded slowly. “I’m be-
ginning to see what you’re
getting at.”

“Natural selection, Jim.
People without courage, de-
termination, imagination and
initiative tend to beget chil-
dren without courage, deter-
mination, imagination and
initiative. ’Course, they don’t
always succeed. Even now, a
lot of fellows like you are
growing up here on Earth.
That’s why the flow of emi-
grants to the colonies never
dries up. See?”

“Yes, I guess I do.”

“Earth’s a doormat world,
Jim. People here ask to be
stepped on. Mind, I don’t say
they like it. But if you apolo-
gize every time somebody
wipes his feet on you, it’s not
surprising if you get stepped
on a lot. Still, we get on all
right when there aren’t any
colonists around. It’s only
when men like Ed Ramsay are
here that people get stepped
on. What can you expect,
when there’s nobody in Win-
safton with enough guts to
say boo to a goose?”

“I seem to remember that
you were always ready to say
boo to a goose.”

"Maybe, Jim, but do you
remember something else? I
always wanted to emigrate.
Only my wife wouldn’t go.”

Jim nodded. “I remember.”
“Well, look, Jim. You were
born here. But you’re a colon-
ist. You’re not scared of Ed
Ramsay. You can get rid of
him. Do that for us, and we’ll
be grateful.”

Jim grinned but shook his
head. “Hell, Sam, Ramsay’s
nothing to me. He never did
me any harm.”

“Wait around,” said Sam
meaningly. "I guess it won't
be long before you change
your mind.”

SAM was wrong. A month
passed and there was no
clash between Ed Ramsay and
Jim Arlen. Whether by chance
or by design, Ramsay avoided
antagonizing Jim in any way.
Although he didn’t stop tak-
ing anything he wanted, from
whisky to women, Ramsay did
nothing new during this peri-
od. He didn’t seek Jim’s com-
pany either. When the two
colonists met in the street they
merely nodded to each other
and passed on.

Meanwhile Jim Arlen was
finding out for himself how it
had been possible for Ed Ram-
say to subjugate the whole
town so that whenever he ap-
peared, doors and windows
slammed, loungers scuttled off
down side streets and women
ran like startled does.

Resistance had been bred
out of Terrans. They weren’t
scared of each other, and con-
sequently when no colonists
were around they acted like

j. t. McIntosh

any human society anywhere.

But when somebody who
did have a strong will said:
“Do this,” everybody in Win-
safton — except Sam Basch —
meekly did as he was told.

Out in the square on a
hot day, Jim experimentally
handed his coat to a man he’d
never seen before. “Take that
to the hotel, please,” he said
firmly.

The other didn’t say a word.
He simply took the coat to the
hotel.

Gradually Jim began to
understand the situation, and
realize what was happening
to Ed Ramsay. All power cor-
rupts, someone had said, and
absolute power corrupts abso-
lutely. If it wasn’t absolute
power that any colonist
wielded in Winsafton, it was
something very dose to it.

Seeing Wesley Coleman one
day with an expensive cigar-
ette case, Jim tried another
experiment.

“That’s a nice case,” he said
casually

“You like it?” said Coleman
guardedly.

“Sure do. Let me look at it,
will you?”

Silently Coleman handed
the case to him.

“I sure would like a case
like this,” Jim said.

He knew perfectly well that
if he took it, Coleman would
say nothing. He also knew
that if he told Coleman to give
it to him, Coleman would do
so. What he wondered was if

Coleman could be made appar-
ently voluntarily to offer him
the case.

Coleman could. It took a
while, and Jim had to admire
the case very pointedly before
Coleman said reluctantly that
he could have it if he liked.
Satisfied, Jim shook his head
and handed it back, to Cole-
man’s obvious relief.

That was power. If you had
to break the law to get what
you wanted, you might find
yourself in real trouble even-
tually, even when the law was
represented only by a spine-
less figurehead like Bill Gar-
land. Among people like this,
however, you didn’t even have
to break the law. You did
what you liked and then made
anybody else concerned say
you had their full permission.

Ramsay was still using
Hank Hawk’s Chrysler, and
Hank was still complaining
about it to Garland. But every--
body knew, including Garland
and Hank, that if the L.E.O.
ever brought himself to the
point of charging Ramsay
with theft, Ramsay would
make Hank say he’d lent him
the Chrysler. Or even that he’d
given it to him.

Almost involuntarily, Jim
found himself ordering people
about. After all, when he was
sitting down comfortably and
suddenly wanted something,
why should he go for it when
there were others around?
When he wanted to go out of
town and look round the prop-

DOORMAT WORLD

erty his father owned, why
shouldn’t he tell somebody to
drive him out and show him?

He knew that Ramsay was
simply waiting for him to
leave before turning the screw
still harder on the citizens of
Winsafton. He knew also that
Sam Basch hadn’t been the
only one who had hoped that
Jim Arlen would fix Ed Ram-
say for them. But now, after
a month, they were getting
worried. If Ramsay could
avoid a clash with Jim Arlen
for a month, couldn't he go
on doing it for another month?
Would Jim Arlen go away
from Winsafton, his business
completed, leaving Ed Ram-
say to extend his power until
the whole town literally
crawled at his feet?

There had been efforts to
make Jim stay longer, but he
had pointed out that the only
ship from Earth to Zukeen in
the next two years left on
August 7.

He was sorry for the Win-
snftonians and from what he’d
heard of him he didn’t think
much of Ed Ramsay. How-
ever, in the colonies your own
business took all your time
and effort, and you got out of
the habit of meddling in other
people’s.

If Ed Ramsay tangled with
him, okay, he and Ramsay
would settle the business be-
tween them. If Ramsay didn’t
tangle with him, Jim Arlen
h^d no intention of interfer-
ing.

WALKING one day in the
square — which was oval
— Jim Arlen became aware of
something different, without
knowing what it was. It took
him a couple of minutes to
realize that the statue in the
center of the grass patch was
missing. It was no great loss.
The statue had been of some
gloomy, long - faced pioneer
who had lived long before
space travel.

Turning from the empty
plinth Jim saw Lucy Jaffray,
who was undoubtedly the pret-
tiest girl in town. Another ex-
periment instantly suggested
itself to him.

“Lucy!” he called.

She started, and seemed
only moderately relieved to
find that it was Jim Arlen and
not Ed Ramsay who had
shouted. She came submissive-
ly enough.

“Look, the statue’s gone,”
Jim said.

She nodded. “It’s being
cleaned,” she said guardedly.

“I think you’d make a lovely
statue, Lucy.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you, Lucy.” He put
his hands on her waist and
lifted her to stand on the
empty plinth.

“Please let me come down,”
she begged, blushingly. Al-
ready a hundred spectators
had gathered.

Jim looked up at her ad-
miringly. She certainly made
a very attractive statue.
“Statues don’t wear clothes,”

j. t. McIntosh

he said. “Anyway, girl statues
don’t. If you’re going to be a
statue, I guess you’ll have to
take yOur clothes off, Lucy.”
“But I don’t want to be a
statue !”

“You can’t help it, Lucy.
You’re pretty enough to be a
statue, and we can’t leave the
plinth empty, can we? Take
your clothes off, Lucy.”
Blushing still more violent-
ly she unzipped her dress and
dropped it to the ground.

“Now when did you see a
statue wearing a girdle?” said
Jim. “It isn’t right, Lucy. It
isn’t right at all.”

Slowly and reluctantly she
took off her underclothes,
stockings and shoes and
crouched on the plinth, cover-
ing herself with her arms.

“Really, Lucy, you don’t
seem to have the idea at all.
I don’t think you’ve ever seen
a statue. Stand straight up —
that’s better.”

The crowd was huge now.
It stayed at a respectful dis-
tance, however, and nobody
snickered or said anything
loud enough for Jim Arlen to
hear.

Poor Lucy went white, then
red, then white again. It
seemed to her as if all the eyes
in the world were fixed on her.

“Okay,” said Jim at last,
“you can come down now.”
“Stay where you are,” said
a voice behind them.

Ramsay was looking at the
naked girl with frank lust in
his eyes. “I must have been

crazy,” he said, “taking you
home only once.”

“I said you could come
down, Lucy,” Jim said.

“And I said stay where you
are,” said Ramsay.

Jim lifted the girl down, ig-
noring Ramsay. Ramsay spat
tobacco juice and bellowed like
a bull. Jim turned, and in an
instant Winsafton had what it
wanted — a fight between the
two colonists.

LUCY picked up her things
and ran. Nobody else went,
however.

It was a fight the like of
which hadn’t been seen on
Earth for centuries. Such a
fight would have been impos-
sible between two Earthmen,
or between a colonist and an
Earthman. Both fighters were
down at least a dozen times,
and no Earthman would have
kept getting up.

The winner of any tough,
even scrap is not so much the
man who can take more as the
man who does take more. Be-
fore half the population of
Winsafton, neither contestant
was prepared to be beaten.
Both knew that the loser
would be finished in the town.

Ramsay’s nose was bleed-
ing copiously, making him
look much more badly hurt
than he was. Jim Arlen’s left
eye was closing rapidly and
his shirt was torn half off.

For the tenth time Ramsay
rushed at Jim and both men
rolled on the ground. Both

DOORMAT WORLD

rose and Ramsay went down.
Ramsay leapt to his feet and
Jim went down. Now one of
Ramsay’s eyes was cut and
Jim spat out a tooth.

For a long time there was
nothing in it. Then Ramsay
went down three times in a
row. He was slower each time
he got up. And the crowd
watched him realize that al-
though he could still take a
lot more, he couldn’t take
enough.

The fourth time he went
down in a row he stayed down.
Perhaps he could have made
another try. The fact was that
he didn’t.

“I don’t want to see you in
town again, Ramsay,” Jim
said.

“You won’t,” Ramsay mut-
tered.

They had both forgotten the
crowd, since everybody had
kept a very respectful dis-
tance away. But at this every
citizen of Winsafton let out
such a yell of delight that
Ramsay, still on the ground,
jerked convulsively.

In a moment Jim was sur-
rounded by hundreds of people
who wanted to shake him by
the hand. In the intoxicating
joy of the moment, Wesley
Coleman accidentally trod on
Ramsay’s face. . .

They heard later that Ram-
say went back to Benvice.

Jim Arlen was feted for
days. He was a public hero.
No one who saw that fight
ever forgot it. What amazed

the spectators was the dogged
courage of men who could be
knocked down time after time
and come back for more. In
the exceedingly rare physical
arguments which still took
place on Earth, it was always
taken for granted that if a
man hit the ground, that was
the end of the fight. Often the
first blow was the last.

Curiously enough, it was
less than a week before Win-
safton’s attitude changed dra-
matically. The start of the
change was when Jim made
Wesley Coleman give him his
cigarette case. Then Jim bor-
rowed Hank Hawk’s Chrysler,
which Hank had had for four
days altogether. Then, sines
it was obviously the most com-
fortable house in town, Jim
moved in with the Goodmans. -
And finally Jim Arlen, not sq^
polygamous as Ramsay, took
Lucy Jaffray in to live with
him.

He was not unaware, him-
self, of what had happened.
.4/1 power corrupts, he told
himself ruefully, pulling Lucy
to him, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely.

Winsafter relied desperately
on one thing — Jim Arlen’s
spaceship blasted off on Au-
gust 7.

With the warmth of Lucy
against him, Jim was wonder-
ing vaguely if it might not be
possible to miss his ship.

He decided it wouldn’t mere-
ly be possible. It would be
easy. END

j. t. McIntosh

IF • Feature

By: THEODORE STURGEON

THE BEM CALLED

WINDIGO

What do you do
when you KNOW
you're insane?

44C O she ordered her b^oth-

O er-in-law to strait-jack-
et her, stun her with an axe
and then set fire to her tent.
While this was done, her hus-
band and children looked on,
for she had an undisputed
right to dispose of herself as
she chose.”

So reads one of the high
points — and they are many
— in an extraordinary report
recently published in the Pro-
ceedings of the American Eth-
nological Society, and written
by Dr. Morton I. Teicher, a
dean at Yeshiva University.

Many years ago — 71, to be
exact — one James George
Frazer wrote down a similar
brief anecdote (a suspenseful
description of a priest in an
olive grove, naked sword in

hand, moving about among
the shadows, sleeping in sec-
l'et, brief snatches, watching,
watching every waking sec-
ond for the man who would
murder him to take his place,
as he had murdered and re-
placed his predecessor. Ex-
plaining who, where and es-
pecially why this happened
took Sir James a quarter of a
century and twelve monu-
mental volumes. The result
was The Golden Bough.

Such anecdotes, out of con-
text, are provocative in the
extreme, and this kind of pro-
vocation is just what nudges
the best science fiction out
of the best science-fiction
writers.

What these two anecdotes
have in common is the note of

social acceptance they carry,
for in one the brother-in-law
does the dirty work while the
family looks on, and in the
other the murderer/victim is
a priest.

BUT back to Dr. Teicher
and his work. His special
field is the Algonkian-speak-
ing group of northeast Ameri-
can Indians — the Cree, Ojib-
wa, Beaver and others — and
their strange and ancient
monster, the windigo.

There are few, if any, draw-
ings or sculptures of the wind-
igo, mainly because these peo-
ple have never gone in for the
graphic arts. But their myths
are very specific. The windigo
has (rather like the Abomin-
able Snowman) yard-long feet
with only one toe and long
pointed heels. His eyes are
bloody and bulging, and you
can hear his hissing breath
for miles. His lipless mouth,
jagged teeth and terrible
clawed hands are used to pack
the monster full of swamp
moss, rotten wood and mush-
rooms, but only when he can’t
get human flesh.

Now, these Indians are not
cannibals, and have a rather
unusually strong taboo
against the practice. Yet fre-
quently— in 42 out of the 70
cases here documented — can-
nibalistic acts were com-
mitted, usually against rela-
tives or close friends. And in
every one of the cases, which
must be termed “insanity”,

the windigo was involved. Dr.
Teicher calls them “windigo
psychoses”, having used the
windigo element in them to
tie together a whole collection
of case histories which range
right across the clinical spec-
trum, from mild neurosis to
the most advanced psycho-
pathological states. These In-
dians are as familiar with the
presence of the windigo, and
its ability to cause such a
variety of disorders, as we are
with the presence of a virus-
group which can cause every-
thing from sniffles to epidemic
influenza. They too have their
therapies. One of these is the
ceremonial murder of the in-
fected person, even before he
has committed a cannibalistic
act.

Which brings us to the case
of the bound, axed, doomed
woman in the burning tent,
and the solemn husband and
children who passively wit-
nessed the scene. She had felt
that she was becoming a win-
digo. It got worse; it got so
bad that the people around
her began to look like beavers;
she wanted to eat them. She
therefore ordered her own
death.

This is undoubtedly insan-
ity, but one must remark in
passing that it startlingly
lacks the “I’m all right” ra-
tionalization of so many ma-
jor psychoses. She knew she
was insane. And isn’t that the
traditional proof of sanity?

END

THE BEM CALLED WINDIGO

IF* V^oyelette

The rubber plant was only a symbol but it was
dangerous. It might endanger a planet— or it
might take a human life!

IN 2212, when Walt Onegh
died, Arm Brewer, Direc-
tor of Staff, recommended
Tom Calloway to fill the emp-
ty position as Director of
Crews at Midwest Construc-
tion. The board, of course,
confirmed.

One of Tom’s first acts was
to drop by Arm’s office and
thank him.

“I’d hoped—” he said.
“But not so soon.”

Arm clapped his big hand
on Tom’s shoulder. His crop-
ped white hair aureoled his
healthy pink face.

“Not a moment too soon,”
he said. “You’re management
material, Tom. A man of prin-
ciples is rare in this cutthroat
world of ours.”

“You overestimate me,”
said Tom. But he glowed in-
side. It was true he had hop-
ed; but not quite as modestly
as he implied to Arm. Fifty
was not old these days. But

neither was it younj*. And
he would be fifty-one m three
weeks. And with people knif-
ing each other in the back for
every little job or advan-
tage. . .

“Run along and take over
your offices,” said Arm geni-
ally. “You inherit from Walt,
lock, stock and barrel. Suite
312.”

“Suite 312,” echoed Tom, sa
voring it. For the three hun-
dreds were third level. Exe-
cutive.

THE meaning of lock, stock
and barrel became more
apparent when he actually
stood in the outer room of his
two-office suite, however. It
obviously included Christine
Nyall and the plant.

It was the plant which, of
the two, struck him more
strongly at first glance.
Among the silver and opale-
scences, the businesslike glit-
ter of the office, it stood out
like a drab of nature, its

A TASTE OF TENURE

By GORDON R. DICKSON niu«toi«d by wood

thick, shiny green leaves
spread out flatly above the
crystal pot.

“Why, what is it?” Tom
asked, forcing a smile.

“A sort of rubber plant,”
Christine Nyall replied. She
ducked her head above her
stenomachine, then added,
with almost a touch of defi-
ance, “Mr. Onegh liked a
touch of green about the
place.”

She did not meet his eye
when speaking. It was this
more than anything else that
disturbed Tom, who had tak-.
en pride all his life in meet-
ing everyone with a level gaze
and a clear conscience. It was
painfully obvious to him at
this moment that Christine
■was being turtle-cautious.
That was what came from be-
ing formerly Walt’s secretary,
and thus now a holdover.

The plain fact of the mat-
ter was that there was now
no job for her, with Walt
dead. In the glutted labor
market of overpopulated
Earth, there was not any
other position available for
her within the company — un-
less Tom made one. And Tom
did not. His own secretary,
Bera Karlson, had been with
him twenty years. He had no
intention of replacing her
with this old woman. On the
other hand, by virtue of her
age and length of service,
Christine was Class A Secre-
tarial. She had tenure. She
could not be discharged short

of the legal retirement age.

It was an uncomfortable
situation, with its only possi-
ble solution lying in Chris-
tine’s voluntary retirement.
And it was clear she had no
present intention of that.

“Um,” said Tom, stepping
over to the plant. He looked
down at it. It was not a pret-
ty thing, he thought; and on
one broad and fleshy leaf a
small spot showed whitely.

“It seems to have a touch
of blight,” he said;

“Oh no,” said Christine,
swiftly. “That’s just a little
bald spot.”

“I see,” said Tom. He turn-
ed away and went on into the
private office to examine that
which would be his.

Afterwards, he took

the problem of Christine
home with him. It was still
obsessing him after dinner,
when he woke to the realiza-
tion that his wife had been
speaking to him and he had
not been listening at all.

“What?” he asked. And
looked at her contritely. “Sor-
ry, Josi. I had my mind on
the office.”

She smiled at him forgiv-
ingly, this slim, amazingly
youthful woman to whom he
had been married for the last
nineteen years. He had mar-
ried late and, as he firmly be-
lieved, for love. And all that
had come out of his marriage,
including his two young sons
— one fifteen and one eleven

GORDON R. DICKSON

— had made him idyllically
happy.

“What’s bothering you?”
she asked.

“No,” he said. “Tell me
what you were talking about,
instead.” She shook her head.

“I'll save it,” she said. “You
first.”

He stretched and straight-
ened up on his couch, look-
ing across to where she sat
half-curled upon an overstuff-
ed hassock, brown against the
white of it, her long limbs
and the slight angularity of
her body softened by the
lounging pajamas tightbelted
around her slim waist.

“It’s Christine Nyall,” he
said. “She’s not retiring.”

“Oh?” said Josi. “But that
doesn’t affect you, does it?”

“I’m afraid so.” He gri-
maced slightly. “She’s a hold-
over. And with no place to go
she’ll be staying in my outer
office. You see — ” He ex-
plained the holdover system,
and tenure.

“But can’t you make her
do her sitting around some-
place else?” asked Josi.

“Not without risking a writ
of prejudice and a work fine,
if a court convicts me,” he
said unhappily. “The tenure
law reads she must be kept
‘on the job’. And the job is
that of being secretary to the
Director of Crews.”

“Oh,” said Josi. There was
silence. Finally he broke it by
asking what had been on her
mind.

“I shouldn’t bother you
with it now,” she said.

“Nonsense. I shouldn’t
bring the office home with
me, anyway. Go ahead.”

“ — Can’t you talk her into
retiring?”

Tom sighed.

“The only thing I can do is
make life in the office a liv-
ing hell for her,” he said.
“I’ve known it done before
by other men with the same
problem. Only I’m just not
built to do something like
that.”

“No,” she answered, look-
ing at him.

“No.” He looked down at
his hand, which had closed
itself into a fist. He opened
it, wiggled the fingers, then
looked again at Josi.

“We’ll forget it,” he said.

“Now, what was it you
wanted to talk about?”

SHE got up from the has-
sock and came over to sit
down beside him. He looked
curiously at her.

“Something important?”
he asked.

“Yes. Tom — ”

“What?*

“You’re class A manage-
ment now,” she said. “You’ve
got tenure. You don’t have
to work any more. We don’t
need to go on living close to
the Company Offices.”

“No — ” He still looked at
her, slightly puzzled. “But
what about it? Where would
you want to live?”

A TASTE OF TENURE

“Away from the city.”

He looked at her in aston-
ishment, convinced that she
must be joking. But her face
was unsmiling.

“But there is no away from
the city,” he said. “Not now-
adays. You know that, Josi.
There’s no unimproved land
left anywhere in the world.”
“There’s the Preserves,”
she said.

“The Preserves!” He blink-
ed. “But you can't live in
them. They’re parks. De-
liberately restricted — you
know that — by the govern-
ment, so we’ll have a few
scraps of open country to
look at and remember the
past.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “But
they have tourist lodges.”

He smiled with sudden un-
derstanding. He reached out
for her hands. Josi let him
take them, but they lay limp
and quiet in his grasp.

“Honey,” he said. “I hate
to disappoint you, but these
cabins and things might as
well be on Pluto as far as you
and I are concerned. I know
it looks like you can live
around the Preserves. But
you can’t. Those tourist quar-
ters have all been bought up
years in advance by the big
travel agencies. To get them
you’d have to sign up for
what they call perpetual tours
— all-expense luxury set-ups.
And the prices are fantastic.
Why, for you and me and the
boys, just the four of us, it’d

be twenty or thirty thousand
a year.” He smiled at her con-
solingly.

She still refused to smile
back. Her face was calm and
still.

“Forty,” she said.

“Forty?" He frowned.

“Forty thousand a year,
Tom, for the four of us.”

He shook his head. Her
words seemed to buzz in his

6£IX*S.

“Forty thousand?” he ech-
oed. “How do you know?”

“I've been checking up.”

“But Josi — ” He ran out of
words, trying not to think
what he could not help think-
ing. “You didn’t suppose, ser-
iously— ”

“I’ve never supposed any-
thing else,” she replied. And
he wondered then how she
could look him in the eye and
say it. “I’ve been waiting for
this for a long time, Tom —
longer than you’d believe.
Since my first baby was
born.”

HE shook his head again,
unbelievingly.

“We can do it now,” she
said. “With your increase in
salary and if we use the sav-
ings and borrow against your
pension. We’ll have enough
for five years; and by that
time you’ll have got another
income boost.”

“Josi!”

“Oh, stop staring like that!”
she snapped, suddenly. “Did
you think I’d let my boys miss

GORDON R. DICKSON

out on a chance at what the
real world once was, if there
was any way at all to give
them even a taste of it?”

He sat back on the couch,
dazed. “It isn’t like you.”

“Because I’ve been a good
wife all these years and done
what you wanted, and lived
where you wanted? You
thought I never had a selfish
desire of my own? Oh, Tom,
Tom!” She clutched his hands
with a strength that shocked
him. “How long are you go-
ing to go on pretending that
people are still like they were
in the old days? There’s no
civilization left now. You
ought to know that! It’s
claw, tooth and nail ! And I’m
looking after my children!”

“Josi,” he said.

She shook her head at
him. “Tom,” she said, “Do
you know how many people
there are on Earth now ?”

“Yes,” he said. “And I
know they’re considering laws
to control the population ex-,
pansion.”

“Control it!” She laughed
like someone lie had never
seen before. “If they’d talk-
ed of controling it fifty years
ago, it might have helped us.
What’s going to help us now?
It’s my babies that have to
grow up in a world where
there’s ten people for every
job and no future for even the
ones who get it. The only way
they can live is if they make
the right friends. And the
only way they can meet the

A TASTE OF TENURE

right friends is to go where
they are. And that’s the Pre-
serves !”

“Josi!” said Tom. “Noth-
ing like that’s necessary. 1
hope I’ve made a moderate
success of myself in the
world. And I can truthfully
say I’ve done it by decent,
honorable methods!”

“You !” she cried. “Oh, you!
The great anachronism !”

“Josi — ” But she was Be-
yond all reasoning.

AS Tom came in through
his outer office on his
way to his desk the following
morning, the rubber plant
took his eye again. It grated
on his overwrought nerves
like a shabby challenge. He
was on the verge of bursting
out at Christine to get rid of
it, when he became suddenly
aware of its extraordinarily
protected position on a new
little ledge, hugging the wall
by her desk — now pushed to
the farthest possible distance
from the desk of Bera Karl-
son, who had moved her own
equipment in on the opposite
side of the room. Abruptly he
realized that he had been on
the verge of taking out his
own unhappiness on an un-
derling— a thing he had
never before allowed himself
to do. He nodded to both wo-
men ; and made himself smile.
“Good morning,” he said.
They answered together —

WILLIAM W. STUART

Bera with a tinge of tension
in her voice, Christine almost
in a whisper. He went on into
his own private office, the
door sucking gently closed be-
hind him.

He dropped in the chair at
his own desk; and for a min-
ute he sat limply, his eyes
closed. The long, unfinished,
unclear, unrewarding argu-
ment with Josi the evening
before had left him drained of
energy and clogged with bit-
terness. He had gained noth-
ing but her promise to let him
think this matter of the Pre-
serves over for a few days be-
fore talking of it again.

He straightened with an ef-
fort and glanced at his ap-
pointment screen. The name
of Orval Lasron glowed at
him from its gray, opaque
surface. He stared at the two
words, troubled by some
slightly ominous echo at the
back of his mind, which they
evoked. Surely, he did not
know the man? After a mo-
ment, he gave up. Buzzing
Bera to admit Lasron, he got
up and crossed over to the one
wall-wide window that looked
down to the Executive Wait-
ing Lounge, three floors be-
low.

He heard Bera’s voice speak
out over the annunciator down
there and a stocky, short man
in middle age, with lumpy
features, rose from a table.
He crossed over to where the
angle of the wall below cut
him off from Tom’s sight.

A TASTE OF TENURE

After a second, the man
rose into sight on a floating
magnetic disk, which came to
a stop outside the window.
Tom touched the dissolve but-
ton and extended his hand.
Lasron stepped through the
now non-existent window. His
handshake was brisk and im-
personal.

“I interrupted your drink
down there,” said Tom. ‘‘May
I—”

“No, thanks,” said the
other.

TOM led the way back to
his desk and both men
seated themselves. Face to
face, Lasron was somewhat
more impressive than he had
been at a distance. There was
a hardness to his bunchy fea-
tures and his eyes seemed to
show the light of a constant,
buried anger.

“And what can I do for you,
Mr. Lasron?”

“You don't know me,” stat-
ed Lasron. He crossed one
thick leg over the knee of the
other.

“No.”

“I’m the local agent for the
Secretarial Code,” said Las-
ron. “I didn’t know you, eith-
er. You were in Sales before,
were you ?”

“That’s right. Our labor
relations were all handled
higher up.”

“Yes.” Lasron shifted in
his chair with an abrupt, im-
patient movement. “Well,
you’ve got a holdover. Chris-
tine Nyall.”

“I know,” said Tom, sober-
ing. “A shame that — ”

“I don’t think so,” inter-
rupted Lasron. “Christine
doesn’t think so.v She intends
to remain on the Job. Quite
happy in it. It’s standard pro-
cedure in these cases to drop
around on the one in Man-
agement responsible. Just as
a reminder.” He paused. “You
understand.”

“No,” answered Tom, sit-
ting straighter. “I don’t think
I do.”

Lasron sighed.

“All right,” he said. “Any
evidence of prejudice and
we’ll slap a writ on you for a
fine. Deal with an illegal out-
fit and we’ll spend half the
money in the treasury, if
necessary, to get a felony rap
to stick to you.”

“Now, wait! Now, look
here,” said Tom. “Just a min-
ute, Lasron. Just what do you
think you’re insinuating? My
record is perfectly clean and
fair. I know some people on
Management Level have the
popular reputation of pulling
dirty tricks in cases like this.
But for your private informa-
tion—”

Lasron waved one hand,
wearily.

“I have a code of ethics!”
snapped Tom. “No, I don’t
pretend I wouldn’t like to see
Christine happily retired. But
— ” He became suddenly
aware that he was talking to
a man who was staring out
the window, humming a small

tune nervously to himself, his
fingers beating small, jerky
time on the arm of his chair.

“Good,” said Lasron, when
Tom stopped. He got to his
feet. His eyes of buried an-
ger burnt briefly and imper-
sonally on Tom, as if the man
across the desk was some-
thing mechanical, trouble-
some and potentially danger-
ous. “I won't take up any
more of your time.”

Tom rose also, and punched
the dissolve button.

“Drop by any time,” he
said, defiantly. “You don’t
have to make an appointment.
Just walk in.”

Lasron looked at him brief-
ly. He appeared to be about
to say something, then turn-
ed away. He nodded his head
and stepped through the dis-
solve window onto the disk
which wafted him down and
out of sight.

Tom was left standing with
a feeling of ugly inadequacy.
He half-turned to his interof-
fice with the intention of call-
ing Arm Brewer, to report the
agent’s threats. But it would
be a bad beginning in the new
position to go running for help
right off the bat. He turned
away again.

Then he thought of calling
in Christine and challenging
her about the agent’s behavi-
or. But that was not strictly
fair, either. Time, he thought,
sitting down at his desk again
— time would iron matters out
automatically.

GORDON R. DICKSON

TWO days later Josi re-
minded him of his prom-
ise to consider the move to
the Preserves. He put her
off, saying he had not had
the chance to think, pleading
the situation at the office.

“Just don’t take too long,
Tom,” she said.

She said it in such an odd,
unusual tone that he looked
at her startled, and then look-
ed away again before she
could catch him staring. He
wanted to ask her what she
meant; but discovered sud-
denly he was afraid to.

That night he slept badly,
and when he did get to sleep
he slept late.

It was later than usual
when he stepped through the
entrance to his outer office.
He could feel immediately
that there was something
wrong. As she answered his
good morning, Christine kept
her eyes fixed on the surface
of her desk ; while Bera, glan-
cing deliberately at him, gave
him a look of peculiar out-
rage, features set and a little
pale. Tom shouldered past
them both into the security of
his own office, hoping to
avoid the matter, whatever
it was.

He was given no choice. On
his appointment screen, Bera’s
name stood out brilliantly, in
the space where his first ap-
pointment should have been.
Tom hesitated for a moment,
to put a small barrier of time
between his entrance and

A TASTE OF TENURE

Bera’s admission; and then
pressed her button and sum-
moned her in.

She came and sat down op-
posite him. It was abundant-
ly clear that a crisis point had
been reached, for as she sat
on the edge of her chair her
body was rigid with the glass-
brittle tension of a woman on
the verge of explosion.

THEY began calmly enough,
but Bera’s low voice quick-
ly climbed the scale toward
hysteria. She did not want to
complain. He knew that she
never complained; but — she
reminded Tom of all the years
she had worked for him. She
asked him if he had ever had
any reason to complain. She
thought that over the years —
and so on. Inevitably came
the tears.

She sat in the big visitor’s
chair and cried, a large-boned,
not unlovely woman at the
end of her thirties; but past
the point where tears could
look good on her. Tom gave
her a drink and waited until
the emotion was controlled.

He was shocked to discover
the whimpering fear that un-
derlay her outburst.

“Why, Bera,” he said, as
soon as she was in fit shape to
listen, “what makes you think
I’d ever get rid of you? Why,
I could no longer get along
without you than — ” he hunt-
ed for an enormous metaphor
and could think of nothing
but— “my right arm.”

Bera gulped, “But She has
tenure and I haven’t, and you
only need one of us.”

“Then I’ll just have to put
up with both of you,” he said,
in a poor attempt to be jocu-
lar. “Anything else is ridicu-
lous.” He frowned. “Besides,
I think after a while she’ll get
tired of not having a real job
to do around here, and retire.”
“No, she won’t — the old bid-
dy!” said Bera with sudden
viciousness. “She wants to
hang on forever.”

“Now, you know that’s not
true,” said Tom. “She just
liked her job. All of us do.”
“Well, I don’t care. She
doesn’t belong in our office.
Why doesn’t she just go?”
“Where do you want her to
go?” asked Tom, reasonably.

“I don’t care. It isn’t as if
she’d starve to death. You
make as much money retired
nowadays as you do working.”
“Well, she’s not going to get
your job,” said Tom. “Now
straighten up, Bera, and for-
get this nonsense. As far as
I’m concerned, Christine has
already retired.”

"Then she shouldn’t be al-
lowed to clutter up the office
with things like that plant of
hers.”

“Why, it’s not a bad look-
ing plant,” said Tom. “I think
it’s rather a nice idea, having
it there. Hardly anyone keeps
flowers or plants around now-
adays.”

“It gets in my way,” said
Bera, sullenly. Tom felt it

was time to put his foot down.

“I’m sure you can work
around it,” he said. “Try it
for a few weeks, anyway. If
Christine is still here after
then, and the plant still inter-
feres around the office, we’ll
see about getting rid of it.
All right?”

Tom got to his feet, which
forced her to rise as well.
“Try and get along with
Christine, then, Bera. I’m
leaving now. I just dropped
by today to take a look at
things. You can tell anyone
who calls that I won’t be back
before tomorrow. Handle
them as you like.”

“Yes.” She wiped her eyes.

“So long, then.” He went
out, closing the door on her
answering good-by. In the
outer office, Christine was sit-
ting at her desk, her face ex-
pressionless and a sheet of
paper filled with aimless dood-
lings before her.

“Well, I’m off for the rest
of the day, Christine,” he
said.

“Good morning, Mr. Callo-
way,” she replied, without
looking up.

He went out the door.

WHEN the tension in the
outer office did not im-
prove, he took a trip to the
other side of the building to
talk to Arm.

“Tom !” Arm jumped to his
feet as Tom entered, and came
forward bouncily, his heavy
face smiling under its white

GORDON R. DICKSON

hair. , “How’s our newest
member upstairs here? Have
a drink?"

“No thanks,” said Tom.
“How’ve you been, Arm?”
“How could I be? Eighty-
seven and sound as the Com-
pany’s credit rating!” Arm
slapped his wide chest. “Why
don’t you and Josi step out
with me one of these nights
and find out for yourselves?
See if the old bachelor can’t
outdo you yet?”

“I wouldn’t doubt it. I’ll
talk to Josi about it,” said
Tom, smiling. “Arm, I hate
to come funning to you with
troubles right away, but I’ve
got stuck in a situation.”
“That the straight sheet?”
Arm punched for a drink and
set it on the edge of his desk.
“What is it?”

“Christine Nyall. Old Walt’s

oppppfurv 99

“Christine — ? Oh, the hold-
over!” Arm looked at Tom,
pulled a long face and rocked
abruptly with hearty laugh-
ter. “Now, that is rough. If
only she’d been some young
bounce, huh, Tom?”

Tom smiled agreeably, if
perfunctorily.

“Well, well.” Arm sobered.
“So you’ve got old Walt’s girl
on your hands. You knew
about her and Walt? Yes, I
see you did. Well, now, what’s
the problem?”

“Well, since I brought Bera
up with me. I’ve really no
need for Christine. But she’s
trying to stick it out.”

A TASTE OF TENURE

“They all do.”

“For myself, I don’t mind
too much — after all, she’s
bound to retire eventually.
But it crowds the office, you
know how we are for space.
And, worst of all, she’s upset-
ting Bera.”

“Well, now, that is serious,”
said Arm. “A good secretary,
broken in over the years. I
can see why you wouldn't
want her disturbed. Why
don’t you do something about
it?”

“But that’s the point. What
can I do?” said Tom. “She’s
got tenure. The representa-
tive of the Secretarial Code
was around just a week or so
ao-o to remind me of that.
What can I do?”

Arm looked across the desk
at him with a curious expres-
sion on his big face.

“You haven’t been ap-
proached yet, then?” he said,
slowly.

“Approached? By who?”

Arm’s drink had been sit-
ting unnoticed all this time.
He picked it up now and sip-
ped at it.

“There’s people,” he said,
“who make a point of being
useful in just such situa-
tions.”

“There are?” Tom search-
ed his expression for a clue.
“In the face of the tenure
law? What can they do? Who
are they, anyway?”

“They contact you.”

“But I mean — oh,” said
Tom. “Oh, oh I seel”

“I don’t know anything
about them myself,” Arm
said, sipping on his drink.
“Nothing whatsoever. I’ve
just heard about them.”

“Of course,” said Tom.
There was a fumbling mo-
ment of silence.

“Sure you won’t have a
drink, after all?”

“Thanks,” said Tom auto-
matically. Arm had already
punched for a full glass with-
out waiting for an answer.
Now he handed the drink
over. Tom took it, his eyes
staring unseeingly through
the wall of Aim’s office.

Will !” said Josi, meeting
him at the front door,
when he arrived at home.

“Hello, honey.” He kissed
her. They went inside.

“You’ve been drinking,” she
said.

“I had a few at the office
with Arm,” he answered, as
they sat down. “He wants us
to go out with him one of
these nights.”

“That’s nice,” said Josi.
“You don’t sound very en-
thusiastic,” he said.

“No, I suppose not.”
“Josi!” he burst out. “Josi,
will you snap out of it? Can’t
you understand I’ve got a cri-
sis brewing in that office of
mine? If I don’t handle this
right, what do you think my
chances of promotion will
be?”

“I’m just waiting,” she
said.

“Here I am up to my ears
in business troubles — ”

“And spending the morn-
ing getting drunk with Arm.”
It developed into a first
class fight.

Ill

THE outer office had be-
come an armed camp.
There was no disguising the
atmosphere of antagonism
that existed there. Tom dodg-
ed through it as quickly as
he could, and remained buried
in the inner office during the
hours of his working day.

But this was no solution.
Bera became more and more
unreliable until it became ob-
vious, even to Tom, that her
work had become clearly sec-
ondary to her feud with
Christine. On Tuesday, at
the beginning of the third
week, Tom was disturbed at
his desk by what could only
be the sounds of a scuffle.

He went swiftly to the door
of the outer office and jerked
it open. The two women were
standing facing each other,
breathing hard, and the jar
which held the plant was
clutched with fierce protec-
tiveness in the arms of Chris-
tine. As the door opened, she
turned to look at Tom for a
single moment, then turned
back and put down the plant
once more in its accustomed
place. She reseated herself,
silently. Bera turned and
walked jerkily back to her

GORDON R. DICKSON

own desk and also sat down.
Neither one said a word.

He waited until they were
ostensibly busy again, then
walked through the office and
out of the front door. He did
not say a word to Bera; and
the back of his neck was
aware that she stared after
him with bitter, fearful eyes,
while the woman across from
her sat silent and depressed,
her head down and her eyes
hopelessly fixed on her desk.

Feeling as if he was chok-
ing, Tom made his way out of
the building. He avoided the
lobby lounge below and took
an aircab to a rooftop bar
neart>y — the Parisien, it was
called. Its small round tables
and wire chairs were imita-
tive of an old-fashioned side-
walk cafe. He ordered a tall
scotch and tried to relax.

Things, he thought, could
not go on like this. Twenty-
four hours had been the limit
on family quarrels between
Josi and himself for years
now. But the present one
about the move to the Pre-
serves seemed to renew itself
daily. Softly, he pounded on
the white, slick surface of the
table with his fist. Trouble
at the office. Trouble at home.
And the two things feeding
on each other to keep them-
selves alive. The tension be-
tween Josi and himself was
blurring his usual decisive-
ness so that he was fumbling
the office problem. And the
office problem wore his

A TASTE OF TENURE

nerves thin so that one word
from Josi was enough to set
him off. Why couldn’t Josi be
a help instead of a hindrance
at a time like this? And why
couldn’t Christine be sensible
and retire?

THE scotch came. He ac-
cepted it automatically,
indifferent to the anachronism
of a live waiter instead of the
usual delivery panel set in the
table. The truth was, he had
started out with a sneaking
sympathy for Christine. It
was not impossible for him to
put himself in her shoes, to
feel an empathy with her. He
had, therefore, been half-in-
clined to let things drift, to
let her sit out her remaining
days in his office — perhaps
even in time to give her small
bits and pieces of work to
make her feel necessary. He
had never imagined such a
violent reaction, however,
from Bera. Who would have
supposed. . .

A shadow fell abruptly
across his table.

He looked up and saw gaz-
ing .down at him a distin-
guished looking man of his
own age. A handsome fellow,
slim, writh a touch of easy
amusement at the corners of
his thin mouth.

“Well, Mr. Calloway,” said
the man, “you’re a hard per-
son to get in touch with.”

He sat down. Tom stared
at him in astonishment.
“Hard?” He looked more

closely at the man. “Do I
know you?”

“May I introduce myself?”
He put the question with
such unnatural stilted for-
mality that for a second Tom
did not realize that it was an
actual question, and not a
rhetorical one.

“Is there any reason why
you shouldn’t?” asked Tom.

“Joe Smith,” said the other,
taking this as permission and
offering his hand. “Utility
Services.”

Tom shook hands automa-
tically.

“Utility Services?”

“Of course you don’t know
us. We aren’t listed. In fact,”
Joe Smith turned to signal
the anachronistic waiter, “le-
gally we don’t exist.”

A bell rang in Tom’s mind.
He sat up straight behind his
scotch and looked penetra-
tingly at his visitor.

“And illegally?” he asked.
The man laughed.

“We understand you have a
problem, Mr. Calloway —
thanks—” he accepted his
glass from the waiter. “A
holdover.”

“Who told you?”

“Why,” said Smith, “it’s a
matter of public record, isn’t
it?” He looked at Tom. “We’re
prepared to help you out.”
“How?”

Smith waved a hand.

44T\EPENDS on the difficul-
1 J ty. Once it was merely
a matter of offering a job

with some dummy firm. But
the Secretarial Code is well up
on simple tricks like that,
lately. In the case of your
Christine — let’s see. She was
supposed to have been having
a long-term affair with her
former employer, wasn’t she?
Perhaps someone who resem-
bled him a great deal could
bring about her resignation.”
“Now, look here,” said Tom.
“Yes, Mr. Calloway?”

“I certainly wouldn’t stand
for anything like that.”

Smith raised his eyebrows.
“What did you expect?” He
leaned forward over the table,
lowering his voice. “I’ll tell
you what you expected — a mi-
racle. We don’t deal in mira-
cles. Just results.”

Tom flushed.

“All right, Smith,” he said.
“I don’t think we’ve got any
business to do together.”

“I think we have,” said
Smith. “Or rather, you have
business to do with us. If
not now, later. We’re a busi-
ness fact of life in this mod-
ern world, Mr. Calloway. Ug-
ly, if you insist on looking at
us that way, but just as un-
avoidable as any other fact
of life.”

“I don’t think so,” said
Tom grimly.

“Don’t you ?” queried Smith.
“Open your eyes, Mr. Callo-
way. This isn’t the last cen-
tury. It’s the present. There’s
no way to hide from the facts
of life now.”

“I’m not sure I know what

GORDON R. DICKSON

you’re talking about,” said
Tom. “But I’ll tell you this.
I’ve lived by my own code of
ethics all my life. And got
along all right. So go peddle
your dirty papers someplace
else.”

. “No, no,” said Smith, shak-
ing his head. “It’s all very
fine to have ethics, Mr. Callo-
way, but they simply don't
work in business. They’ve
gotten to be a luxury nobody
can afford any more. Save
your ethics for home. Tell
them to the kids for bedtime
stories when you tuck them
in for the night. But don’t
go messing up your career
with them. You’ll regret it.
Indeed you will, Calloway.
People like this Christine ex-
pect to get kicked out. They
just hang around creating a
fuss until they are.”

WTF you think you can say
•l that — ” Tom checked him-
self suddenly, remembering
the office as it had been late-
ly. Remembering Josi. “My
wife — ” he began, without
thinking. Then he stopped.
“What about your wife?”
“None of your business!”
“Oh? But I take it,” said
Smith, looking at him closely,
“you weren’t about to listen
to her, either?”

Tom shuddered suddenly
and quite unexpectedly.

“It’s all nonsense,” he said.
“Someone walk over your
grave?” said Smith, not en-
tirely unmaliciously. “You

A TASTE OF TENURE

ought to know the truth as
well as your wife. As well as
me, for that matter.” He
waved his arm out over the
parapet of the rooftops, at
the endless buildings sur-
rounding them. “Look at that.
Full up. Ripe. Starting to
rot, wouldn’t you say?” He
grinned at Tom.

“What’re you talking
about?” said Tom. “There’s
unlimited frontiers. New
worlds. . .”

“You want to go? Do I
want to go ?” Smith sat back,
shaking his head and took a
drink from his glass. “Easier
to stay here and face facts,
Calloway. And the fact you’ve
got to face — ” he tapped with
his fingernail on the shiny
white tabletop, his nail mak-
ing a hard clicking sound
against it — “is that you must
do for this Christine or, indi-
rectly, she’s going to do for
you. If you don’t get her out
of that office, the mess’ll
grow. It’ll grow until you find
yourself into it too deep to
pull yourself out. I’ve seen
this sort of thing before.” He
got up. “Think about that
Calloway. You or her. And
the longer you hesitate, the
more likely it's going to be
both of you.”

IT was evening before Tom
found Christine Nyall.
After Smith left, Tom had
tried to call her at the office.
Bera hold him the older wo-
man had gone for the day.

Bera did not have Christine’s
address, either, so Tom had
been forced to go to a pub-
lic tracing center. It took the
center three hours to come up
with a list of places where
she might be found.

He located her at last, sit-
ting at one of the small tables
around the wide expanse of
dance floor in one of the mid-
age groups recreation centers.
She sat alone, a barely touch-
ed drink in front of her, the
glowingly white translucent
dance floor throwing a pale
illumination on her overpow-
dered face. He strode over
and sat down opposite Ik

“Christine,” he said.

She turned from her blank
contemplation of the dancing
couples on the floor and look-
ed at him. As his identity
registered, her features slid
into the carefully controlled
expression he was used to see-
ing at the office.

“Mr. Calloway,” she mur-
mured.

“Hello.” He stumbled, sud-
denly at a loss for words. "Er
-^another drink?”

She touched the glass be-
fore her.

“Thanks, no,” she said.

“I see,” he said, “Well, I
think I’ll have one.” He press-
ed buttons and waited for a
few short seconds until a filled
glass rose from the slot in the
center of the table. He took
it, swallowed largely and put
it back on the table. “I’ve had
a hard time finding you.”

The words reminded him
immediately of the man nam-
ed Smith. He put his drink
down with a gesture of revul-
sion. He looked at Christine,
almost pleadingly.

“Look, Christine,” he said,
“do you really think you’d
feel happier belonging to my
office staff than you would,
retired ?”

She reached for her glass
and turned it.

“Yes,” she said, “Yes, I
do.”

“You know,” he said, try-
ing to joke, “sooner or later
we all have to quit.”

She looked up sharply. He
saw her eyes were terrified.

“Not until retirement age !”
she said, “I’ve got tenure!”

“Of course, of course. I
know you’ve got tenure,” said
Tom. “But you do see — you’re
just putting off the inevitable,
don’t you?”

“I only want my rights.
That’s all!”

TOM took a heavy gulp
from his glass. He push-
ed it away from him.

“Look,” he said, “I want us
to be friends. I know how
I’d feel if I was — well — put
in an awkward position with
some years yet to go to re-
tirement. I’d like to do what’s
best for you. And I know
Bera. She can be difficult to
get along with.”

“I don’t mind,” said Chris-
tine carefully.

“Oh come now,” said Tom.
GORDON R. DICKSON

“Informally— just between

the two of us — I know she’s
been raising cain ever since
we moved into the new of-
fice.”

“Bera’s all right,” she an-
swered. “I like Bera.”

Tom gaped at her. The
statement was too monstrous
to refute.

“Christine!” he burst out,
finally. “Let’s be honest, any-
way!” She looked stubbornly
down at her drink. “Look, if
you really want to stay, you
can. I’ll talk to Bera. Or the
three of us will all get to-
gether and thrash this thing
out. That is, if you really
want to stay.”

She glanced up obliquely,
almost slyly, at him.

“I can stay anyway,” she
said.) “My tenure guarantees
it”

“Of course! Of course you
can stay !” cried Tom. “That’s
not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about fitting you
in, making a useful place for
you.”

“That’s all right.” He rais-
ed her head to look him
squarely in the eye. “You
don’t have to bother about
me.”

“Good Lord !” shouted Tom.
“Do you like things the way
they are?”

“You might as well give up,
Mr. Calloway,” she said. “I
know what my rights are,
and I’m not going to give
them up. If you’ve got any
questions you can call up the

A TASTE OF TENURE

Secretarial Code and talk to
Mr. Lasron. Of course, I’ll
have to report to him you
tried to talk to me here, to-
day.”

For a moment Tom stared
at her in amazement.

“You stupid woman!” he
burst out finally. “Can’t you
see I’m trying to help?”

Christine’s face went white
and frightened. She jerked
as if she had been struck. For
a moment she sat as if para-
lyzed; then she made a small
noise in her throat and scram-
bled up. She was hurrying
off, before Tom could stop
her, between the tables.

“Christine! Wait!” he call-
ed after her. But she was al-
ready gone.

IT was late when he at last
got home. Josi was wait-
ing for him in the lounge
room.

“Had your supper?” she
asked a little sharply, as he
came in.

“I’m not hungry.” He drop-
ped into a chair.

“Would you like a drink?
Or — ” she stood over him —
“have you had too many al-
ready?”

“Josi,” he said wearily, put-
ting his head in his hands,
“don’t start in on me now.”
She sat down opposite him.
“I’m sorry, Tom,” she said.
“But we’ve got something to
talk over. I’ve been waiting
for you since this afternoon.”
“Can’t it wait?”

“No, Tem.”

A note he had never before
heard in her voice made him
look up.

“I’m leaving things up to
you, Tom,” she said. “I went
down to the tourist agency
and told them to go ahead
with our reservations.”

“Josi!”

“You listen to me now. The
plans are at a premium. I
can’t afford to wait. The Pre-
serves may be filled up, or
the price increased any day
now, to where we can't afford
it.”

“Josi, listen!”

“No. Now I’m doing the
talking, Tom,” she said. “I
told you I was going through
with this. And I meant it.
The reservation is in my
name. If you won’t come
along, then I’m getting a di-
vorce. My settlement will pay
for the first few years of the
plan ; and after that we’ll
work things out any way we
can. But whether you like it
or not, whether you come or
not, the boys and I are leav-
ing for the Preserves. It’s up
to you, Tom.”

She i-ose to her feet and left
him, sitting in the lounge,
numb and old and alone.

THE next morning found
him having breakfast at
a poolside restaurant not far
from the office. He had slip-
ped out of the house to avoid

100

Josi, for reasons that were at
the moment unclear to him.
He sat at his small table un-
der a striped awning, staring
out at the early morning
swimmers in the pool. The
coffee seemed tasteless.

He had spent the whole of
a wakeful night trying to be-
lieve what Josi had told him.
Accepting it was something
else again. First he had to
believe she would do such a
thing. It was all the more
wildly improbable for the rea-
son that he believed Josi still
loved him. Only there seem-
ed to be some startling and
hitherto unsuspected limits to
that love.

How, he wondered, staring
at the pool, had Josi reached
such a point? He tried to
think back over their discus-
sions— well, be honest and
call them arguments. Had
there been some point at
which he had driven her to
desperation ? Thinking back,
he could remember no such
point. In fact, he had never
given a definite “no” to* the
idea. He had merely been
doubting and wanting to put
off his decision until he could
settle the problem of Chris-
tine.

That could only mean — he
came back to the point not
for the first nor even for the
hundredth time since the pre-
vious evening — that Josi had
simply long ago decided to
eliminate him from the fam-
ily. She had thought not my

GORDON R. DICKSON

husband, our family; but sim-
ply my children and I. She
had cut him out.

Or had he ever belonged?

After a while, he got up and
went to the office.

When he came in this morn-
ing, Bera was absorbed in her
work ; but Christine looked up
at him with a momentary
strange, unreadable expres-
sion. He brushed past both
of them and went on into his
own office.

He sat down at his desk.
He had never been an early
morning drinker; but now he
punched for Scotch. After a
moment, the tall glass rose to
the surface of his desk and
he took it. It tasted alien and
bitter, like the coffee he had
drunk earlier. But he forced
himself to swallow it.

After a little while, the
hard edges of his world sof-
tened somewhat. He straight-
ened up and looked at his ap-
pointment screen.

There, waiting for him, was
the name of Lasron. He got
up from his desk and looked
out the window, down into the
lounge.

THERE was Lasron wait-
ing. Tom made out the
man’s thick body seated alone
at a table before a glass from
which he was not drinking.
His fingers seemed to be
drumming on the table top.
Impatient. Well, he would just
have to wait. Team came back
to his desk and pushed the

A TASTE OF TENURE

button that summoned Chris-
tine.

She came in hesitantly,
closing the door behind her
instead of letting it suck shut
automatically, and approach-
ed his desk.

“Sit down,” said Tom.

She seated herself careful-
ly on the edge of the big vis-
itor’s chair.

“Christine,” he said, “I
wanted to talk to you.”

“I know,” she answered.
She was watching her own
fingers, which she had laced
together and was turning,
backwards and forwards,
in her lap.

“You know?” he said.

“I’m so terribly sorry, Mr.
Calloway,” she said. “I want
to apologize — ”

He stared at her in startle-
ment. But she was hurrying
on, tripping over her own
words in her haste.

“I just couldn’t help it af-
ter working here so long. I
couldn’t help thinking it was
our office — mine and Mr.
Onegh’s. And then, when
you’re older and you’ve got
no one — to be cut loose, to
just eat and sleep and die and
be forgotten — you go a little
crazy, I guess.”

“Well, now,” said Tom,
“Christine — ”

“And they make matters
worse for us down at the Sec-
retarial Code. They warn us
Management will try all sorts
of dirty tricks to make us re-
sign, when we’ve got tenure.

701

They get us so worked up,
Mr. Calloway, that we can’t
trust anyone. And I didn’t
trust you. I called Mr. Lasron
last night, after you talked to
me. It wasn’t until after I
punched off the phone, that I
thought to remember you
hadn’t been anything but
kind. You didn’t even com-
plain about the plant."

Tom found his voice a little
hoarse, and cleared it. “No
point in being unfair."

“I know. I just couldn’t be-
lieve it." She twisted her
hands. “I want to tell you
about that plant, Mr. Callo-
way. It — ’’ She hesitated, and
her powdered face twisted in-
to a slight grotesqueness. “It
meant a good deal to me. You
must know about me and Mr.
Onegh.”

“Yes,” said Tom.

“A lot of people knew.” She
was stroking one blue-veined
hand with the fingers of the
other, as if in fascination with
the process. “They knew I
loved him and they guessed —
that was before his wife died
— that we were getting away
for a weekend, now and then.
But nobody here knew we
once had nearly a whole year
together.”

TOM jerked his head back
from the window.

“Yes." She nodded a little.
“It was before you came to
the Company. There was an
underground city supply unit
to be set up in the Midlands,

102

on Venus. The Company took
the bid. Mr. Onegh was sent
out as Management Represen-
tative when we got the job.
I took a leave of absence; and
he pulled some strings to get
me an appointment on the
Government Inspection Crew.
So we both went out, and no
one here knew about it.”

She stopped. Tom was star-
ing at her. She went on.

“It was a year,’-’ she said.
“We could have stayed on Ve-
nus. I wanted to. But Walter
— ” Her voice trailed off.

“He thought,” said Tom,
and was jarred at the sound
of his own voice, so strange
it sounded, “of his wife and
his job here.”

“Yes,” she Whispered.

Her index finger made lit-
tle circles on the arm of the
chair. She spoke again.

“He was a coward,” she
said. Tom started and looked
at her with a sort of horror.
“I thought you loved him?”
“I did.” She raised her
head. “He wasn’t a coward
when I first met him. It was
the years made him that. All
the years and the sneaking
around corners with me. And
the business getting tighter
and tighter every year, so
that even someone who’d been
with the Company as long as
he had didn’t feel safe.”
“Class A Management.
With tenure.” Tom’s throat
was dry, suddenly.

She smiled sadly at him.
“Oh, they've got dirty

GORDON R. DICKSON

tricks for Management level,
too,” she said. “When I was
working with Walter — ” Her
voice trailed off, embarrassed-
ly.

TOM sat still in his chair.

He opened his mouth,
closed it again and suddenly,
almost with violence, shoved
himself to his feet. Turning,
he stepped to the office win-
dow and looked out. Across
from him, over the airy
depths of the lounge below, he
could make out Arm Brewer,
his white thatch vigorously in
movement beyond the pane of
his window on the opposite
side of the lounge.

“What about the plant?”
Tom said without turning.
“You were going to tell me
about the rubber plant.”

“Well, you know how Venus
is,” her voice rang in his ears.
“The carbon dioxide blanket,
the dust storms, nothing
green anywhere. It was
against the shipping rules,
but he took the plant along
when he went to Venus — for
me. To make me happy. For
that one year it grew in our
home.”

Out and below Tom, the
lounge eddied in its steady
movement of continual
coming and going. Salesmen,
jobhunters, caterers, favor-
seekers, representatives like
Lasron — the flotsam of the
commercial sea. All waiting.
All hungry.

Yes, thought Tom.

A TASTE OF TENURE

Just then, through the
wide-swinging entrance of the
lounge came the tall, thin fig-
ure of Mr. Smith. For a mo-
ment, Tom hung, not even
breathing, staring down at
the tall man.

Behind him, Christine talk-
ed on. But he heard her only
as background noise. Smith
had just nodded to Lasron,
sitting at his table; and Las-
ron had lifted a hand in ac-
knowledgement.

Mr. Smith paused to speak
to the receptionist, his ele-
gant head a little on one side.
He turned and went over the
opposite wall soaring up from
the lounge. A disk came im-
mediately to life on the floor,
and he stepped aboard. It
bore him upward to the win-
dow of Arm’s office, opposite.
The window dissolved before
him as Arm reached out a
hand in greeting. They went
inside together and — did their
heads turn to look for a mo-
ment in the direction of Tom's
office as they went?

Tom had a sudden diz-
zying sensation of falling. It
was as if the lounge below
reached up with clutching fin-
gers to drag him down. He
clung to the window drape
beside him for a minute, find-
ing the heavy metallic cloth
slippery in his damp hands.
He took a deep breath,
straightened and turned.

“Yes, yes,” he said, inter-
rupting Christine. “I appre-
ciate your telling me about

103

the plant. But I think that
in spite of the sentimental at-
tachment you have for it,
we’ll have to get rid of it.”

HER mouth open, she star-
ed at him. In her aston-
ishment she looked almost im-
becilic.

“You understand,” he went
on, the words coming auto-
matically, “I’m a liberal-mind-
ed man myself. But I can
hardly be expected to put up
with a souvenir of this type.
After all, this is a business
office, not a bedroom. I was
a young man once myself —
fairly recently, too. And I
had my — er — fun. And I rec-
ognize that a single woman
and a man with a perpetually
ailing wife might have their
problems op a physical plane.
But to flaunt mementos of —
well, it seems to me to be a
little too much.”

She looked up at him with
a rabbit-like fascination, as
if he had suddenly revealed
scales and a moveless eye. He
met her look squarely. It was
odd. but he felt no need to
avoid her. His eyes were
heavy as pebbles in his face,
and as insensitive to what he
gazed at.

“So I'll just ask you to put
it away somewhere right
now,” he said. He paused.
“Naturally, I’m going to have
to submit a memo on this to
the Company psychiatrist. I
believe you need help, Chris-
tine. Women often do at your

104

age. I’ll do what I can by at-
taching a complete account
of what you told me about
you and Walter — ”

With one quick, gasping in-
take of breath, she was on
her feet. She turned and ran
from his office. The imper-
sonal machinery of the door
closed it politely behind her.

Tom sat down at his desk.
He felt as if he should be
shaking, but he was not. He
laid his hands on the desktop
but felt nothing.

After a while he became
aware of the sound of Bera’s
buzzer, calling for his atten-
tion. But he ignored it. It
was not until some little time
after that, that the door to
his office opened and she
came in. Her eyes were wide,
showing too much white; and
her lips trembled.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Mr. Calloway — Mr. Callo-
way, it’s Christine!”

HE looked carefully at her.
“What about Christine?”
“I’m worried. Perhaps I’ve
been — I didn't think.”

“Will you tell me,” he said,
“what it is? If you don’t
mind, Bera!”

“She locked herself in the
supply closet in our outer of-
fice. She won’t come out, and
she doesn’t- — doesn't answer.”
“Oh?” said Tom. “I see.”
He took a slow breath and
leaned back in his chair.

“I’m scared. She took the
plant. Oh, Mr. Calloway, I

GORDON R. DICKSON

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in your neighborhood

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with your name printed on It.

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A TASTE OF TENURE

didn’t mean to be so nasty to
her! If she’s— ”

“Control yourself, Bera.”
Tom got up from his chair.
“I’m sure it’s quite all right.
Perhaps the door locked ac-
cidentally. Perhaps she had
a little fainting fit in there.
After all, she’s not as young
as she once was. Why don’t
you run down and get the
janitor up here to unlock the
door? Don’t make a fuss
about it. Just say the door’s
locked and we can’t find the
key.”

“Oh, yes! I’ll run!” said
Bera. “I’ll run right away!”
She dashed out of the room.

After she had gone, Tom
sat still for a second. Then
he reached out and punched
for a private connection to
Arm Brewer on the interof-
fice phone.

Arm’s face sprang into
view on its screen.

“Who? Oh, Tom. What can
I do for you?”

“Just give me a few point-
ers about something when
you’ve got time, Arm,” said
Tom. “Josi and I are think-
ing of taking one of those
perpetual tours around the
Preserves — ”

“Preserves? Sure!” boom-
ed Arm. “I’ve been on them.
Tell you all about it, if you
want. How’s things down at
your end there?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to
have to let Bera go after all,”
said Tom, steadily. “And keep
Christine. Bera’s gone all to

105

.pieces lately. Lets her work
go, and spends all her time
picking on Christine. Of
course, there's no tenure
problem with Bera.”

“Ah? I hadn’t realized
that,” said Arm, raising white
eyebrows. “Well, that settles
your little problem.”

“Yes. I’m afraid so.” Tom
sighed. “Too bad. I’d never
have considered this if she'd
— but, well, this is easier all
around. She's been making
life hell for Christine.”
“Yeah. I heard something
about that. Look, talk to you
later, okay, Tom? I’ve got a
little deal on right now.”
“Fine. Thanks, Arm.”

“Not at all. Any time.”
Tom broke the connection
and sat back, waiting for
Bera to return. For a while
he heard nothing but silence.
But then, at last, there was
the muffled sound of voices
reentering his outer office.
For a moment they murmur-
ed busily together; then there
was the sound of a lock turn-
ing. Then silence.

— When the scream came,
he was expecting it.

High and clear in Bera’s
voice, he had been expecting
it all along. Sitting still at
his desk, he did not move.
Only the muscles of his body
froze all together as if the
blood in them had congealed
at the sound; and the sweat
stood suddenly out on his
forehead like living water
from the rock. -—END

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106

GORDON R. DICKSON

IF • Feature

-//. • ' . • • • • ')

science briefs

WHEN you come right
down to it, there are only
two things to be done about
the deadly unwanted by- prod-
ucts of the atomic age — seal
them off somehow, or learn to
live with them. The Atomic
Energy Commission likes the
policy of burying atomic
wastes underground, in care-
fully selected sites where it
can be ascertained that there
will be no low-level water
tables or other opportunity
for “leakage”. In spite of the
fact that any atomic facility
produces vast amounts of
"hot” waste, a surprisingly
large amount of it can be dis-
posed of in a small space. For
example, all the low-intensity

SCIENCE BRIEFS

wastes of Oak Ridge have
been buried in a 60-acre area.
Commission experts calculate
that one 2- to 300 acre site
would be enough to bury all
the wastes produced in the
northwest for the next 20
years. As to airborne radio-
activity — well, ways have to
be found to live with it. One
way is indicated by experi-
ments at Georgia Tech, who
have been able to cut the
radioactive cesium content of
milk by feeding cows on grass
grown indoors, not in soil but
in hydroponic tanks. The cut,
measured against a control
group of outdoor-pastured
cows, was dramatic — about
38%.

107

Next time you hear anyone
talking about modem miracle
fabrics, spring this one on
them : a new materia} is wov-
en from small-diameter wire
made of cobalt-chromium and
nickel-chromium alloys. It is
then run up — but not on
Grandma's sewing machine —
into re-entry parachutes for
use, ultimately, in the recov-
ery of manned satellites.

Thirsty? Well, stick around.
You may be a good deal thir-
stier before too long. Fresh-
water demand will exceed nat-
ural supply by 85 billion gal-

lons a day within the next 20
years.

The real weird-o of the ele-
mental table, helium, is about
as snobbish as an element can
get. It can’t explode or bum
or react with anything or
combine with anything. This
makes it handy if you have an
original copy of the Declara-
tion of Independence around
and would like to keep it a
while. Or if you are a welder
and would like your arc to
work in an atmosphere where-
in nothing will dirty up the
metal with oxides. END

Kangaroo Quiz

Here’s the solution to the
problem on page 66. Bar bet-
tors and bubblebrains may
drop out at this point; others
may want to know what the
act of solving this one means.

If you solved the nine-dot
puzzle, you are almost certain-
ly a highly creative person.
Most people are not, and if
you couldn’t; you may comfort
yourself with this further
proof of your membership in
the vast majority.

This test was used as a
demonstration in a recent
seminar at the East Pitts-
burgh plant of Westinghouse:
subject, creative engineering,
or, what makes the bright
ideas come, and to whom? One
thing common to most highly

108

creative minds, according to
the Westinghouse scientists,
is the refusal to accept any
limitations except those ex-
actly stated.

Most people, when present-
ed with the nine-dot puzzle,
fail to solve it because they
assume that they must stay
within the pattern of dots, or
that they must not cross any
lines.

What’s your excuse?

SCIENCE BRIEFS

I F • V^ovelette

THE

JUNKMAKERS

BY ALBERT TEICHNER

ERIC WAS THE BEST ROBOT THEY'D EVER HAD
—PERFECTLY TRAINED, EVER THOUGHTFUL.

A JOY TO OWN. NATURALLY THEY
HAD TO DESTROY HIM !

WENDELL HART had
drifted, rather than
plunged, into the underground
movement. Later, discussing
it with other members of the
Savers’ Conspiracy, he found
they had experienced the same
slow, almost casual awaken-
ing. His own, though, had
come at a more appropriate
time, just a few weeks before
the Great Ritual Sacrifice.

The Sacrifice took place
only once a decade, on High

Holy Day at dawn of the
spring equinox. For days prior
to it joyous throngs of work-
ers helped assemble old ve-
hicles, machine tools and com-
puters in the public squares,
crowning each pile with used,
disconnected robots. In the
evening of the Day they
roudly made their private
eaps on the neat green lawns
of their homes. These tradi-
tionally consisted of house-
hold utensils, electric heaters,
air conditioners and the fam-
ily servant.

10?

The wealthiest — considered
particularly blessed— even had
two or three automatic ser-
vants beyond the public con-
tribution, which they de-
stroyed in private. Their more
average neighbors crowded in-
to their gardens for the awe-
some festivities. The next
morning everyone could re-
turn to work, renewed by the
knowledge that the Festival
of Acute Shortages would be
with them for months.

Like everyone else, Wendell
had felt his sluggish pulse
gaining new life as the time
drew nearer.

A cybernetics engineer and
machine tender, he was down
to ten hours a week of work.
Many others in the luxury-
gorged economy had even
smaller shares of the purpose-
ful activities that remained.
At night he dreamed of the
slagger moving from house to
house as it burned, melted and
then evaporated each group
of junked labor-blocking de-
vices. He even had glorious
daydreams about it. Walking
down the park side of his
home block, he was liable to
lose all contact with the out-
side world and peer through
the mind’s eye alone at the
climactic destruction.

Why, he sometimes won-
dered, are all these things so
necessary to our resurrection?

Marie had the right answer
for him, the one she had
learned by rote in early child-
hood : “All life moves in cycles.

Creation and progress must
be preceded by destruction. In
ancient times that meant we
had to destroy each other ; but
for the past century our in-
herent need for negative mo-
ments has been sublimated —
that’s the word the news
broadcasts use — into proper
destruction.” His wife smiled.
“I’m only giving the moral
reason, of course. The practi-
cal one’s obvious.”

Obvious it was, he had to
concede. Men needed to work,
not out of economic necessity
any more but for the sake of
work itself. Still a man had
to wonder . . .

had begun to visit the
Public Library Archives,
poring over musty references
that always led to maddening-
ly frustrating dead ends. For
the past century nothing real-
ly informative seemed to have
been written on the subject.

“You must have government
authorization,” the librarian
explained when he asked for
older references. Which, nat-
urally, made him add a little
suspicion to his already large
dose of wonder.

"You’re tampering with
something dangerous,” Marie
warned. “It would make more
sense for you to take long-
sleep pills until the work cycle
picks up.”

“I will get to see those early
references.” he said through
clenched teeth.

He did.

110

ALBERT TEICHNER

All he had needed to say at
the library was that his worfc
in sociology required investi-
gation of some twentieth cen-
tury files. The librarian, a tall,
gaunt man, had given him a
speculative glance. “Of course,
you don’t have government
clearance . . . But we get so
few inquiries in sociology that
I'm willing to offer a little
encouragement.” He sighed.
“Don’t get many inquiries al-
together. Most people just
can't stand reading. You might
be interested to know this —
one of the best headings to
research in sociology is Con-
spicuous consumption .”

Then it was Wendell’s turn
to glance speculatively. The
older man, around a healthy
hundred and twenty-five, had
a look of earnest dedication
about him that commanded re-
spect as well as confidence.

“Conspicuous consumption?
An odd combination of words.
Never heard of that before.
I will look it up.”

The librarian was nervous
as he led his visitor into a
reference booth. “That’s about
all the help I can offer. If any-
thing comes up, just ring for
me. Burnett’s the name. Uh —
you won’t mention I put you
on the file without authoriza-
tion, I hope.”

“Certainly not.”

As soon as he was alone he
typed Conspicuous consump-
tion into the query machine.

It started grinding out long
bibliographical sheets as well

THE JUNKMAKERS

as cross-references to Obsoles-
cence, Natural; Obsolescence,
Technological; Obsolescence,
Planned, plus even odder items
such as Waste-making, Art of
and Production, Stimulated
velocity of. How did such dis-
parate subjects tie in with
each other?

BY the end of the afternoon
he began to see, if only
dimly, to what the unending
stream of words on the view-
er pointed.

For centuries ruling classes
had made a habit of conspicu-
ously wasting goods and ser-
vices that were necessities for
the mass of men. It was the
final and highest symbol of
social power. By the time of
Louis XIV the phenomenon
had reached its first peak. The
second came in the twentieth
century when mass production
permitted millions to devote
their lives to the acquisition
and waste of non-essentials.
Hart’s twenty-second century
sensibilities were repelled by,
the examples given. He shud-
dered at the thought of such
anti-social behavior.

But a parallel development
was more appealingly positive
in its implications. As the
technological revolution
speeded up, devices were su-
perseded as soon as produced.
The whole last half of the
1900’s was filled with in-
stances where the drawing
board kept outstripping the
assembly line.

Ill

Hart remembered this last
change from early school days
but the later, final develop-
ment was completely new and
shocking to him. Advertising
had pressured more and more
people to replace goods before
they wore out with other
goods that were, essentially,
no improvement on their pred-
ecessors! Eventually just the
word “NEW” was enough to
trigger buying panics.

There had been growing
awareness of what was hap-
pening, even sporadic resis-
tance to it by such varied
ideologies as Conservative
Thrift, Asocial Beatnikism
and Radical Inquiry. But,
strangely enough, very few
people had cared. Indeed, any-
thing that diminished con-
sumption was viewed as dan-
gerously subversive.

“And rightly so!” was his
first, instinctive reaction. His
second, reasoned one, though,
was less certain.

The contradiction started to
give him a headache. He hur-
ried from the scanning room,
overtaxed eyes blinking at the
rediscovery of daylight.

Burnett walked him to the
door. “Not feeling well?” he
inquired.

“I’ll be all right. I just need
a few days real work.” He
stopped. “No, that's not why.
Tm confused. I’ve been read-
ing crazy things about obso-
lescence. They used to have
strange reasons for it. Why,
some people even said replace-

112

ments were not always im-
provements and were unnec-
essary !”

Burnett could not complete-
ly hide his pleasure. “You’ve
been getting into rather deep
stuff.”

“Deep — or nonsensical!”
“True. True. Come back to-
morrow and read some more.”
“Maybe I will.” But he was
happy to get away from the
library building.

Marie was horrified when
he told her that evening about
his studies. “Don’t go back
there,” she pleaded. “It’s dan-
gerous. It’s subversive! How
could people say such awful
things? You remember that
Mr. Johnson around the cor-
ner? He seemed such a nice
man, too, until they arrested
him without giving a reason
. . . and how messed up he was
when he got out last year.
I’ll bet that kind of talk ex-
plains the whole thing. It’s
crazy. Everyone knows items
start wearing out and they
have to be replaced.”

“I realise that, honey, but
it’s interesting to speculate.
Don’t we have guaranteed
freedom of thought?”

She threw up her hands as
if dealing with a child. “Nat-
urally we have freedom of
thought. But you should have
the right thoughts, shouldn’t
you? Wendell, promise me you
won’t go back to that library.”
“Well — ”

“Reading’s a very risky
thing anyway.” Her eyes were

ALBERT TEICHNER

saucer-round with fright.
“Please, darling. Promise.”
“Sure, you’re right, honey.
I promise.”

HE meant it when he said
it. But that night, toss-
ing from side to side, he felt
less certain. In the morning,
as he went out, Marie asked
him where he was going.

“I want to observe the prep-
arations for the Preliminary
Rites.”

“Now that,” she grinned,
“is what I call healthy think-
ing.”

For a while he did stand
around the Central Plaza
along with thousands of other
idlers, watching the robot
dump trucks assemble the
piles of discarded equipment.
The crowd cheered loudly as
an enormous crane was knock-
ed over on its side.

“There’s fifty millions worth
out there!” a bystander ex-
ulted. “It’s going to be the
biggest Preliminary I’ve ever
seen.”

“It certainly will be!” he
said, catching a little of the
other man’s enthusiasm de-
spite his previous doubts.

Preliminary Rites were part
of the emotion-stoking that
preceded the Highest Holy
Day. Each Rite was greater
and more destructive than
those that had gone before.
As tokens of happy loyalty,
viewers threw hats and
watches and stickpins onto
the pile just prior to the entry

THE JUNKMAKERS

of the slaggers. What better
way could be found for each
man to manifest his common
humanity?

After a while doubt started
assailing him again, and Hart
found himself returning al-
most against his will to the
Library Building. Burnett
greeted him cordially. “To-
day’s visit is completely le-
gal,” he said. “Anyone doing
olden time research is auto-
matically authorized if he has
been here before.”

“I hope my thought can be
as legal,” Hart blurted out.
“Well — that was just a joke.”
“Oh, I can recognize a joke
when I hear one, my friend.”
Hart went to his booth, feel-
ing the man’s eyes measuring
him more intently than ever.
It was almost a welcome re-
lief to start reading the ref-
erence scanner once more.

But not for long. As the
wider pattern unfolded, his
anxiety state intensified.

It was becoming perfectly
obvious that many, many re-
placements used to be made
long before they were needed.
And it was still true. I should
not be thinking such thoughts,
he told himself, I should be
outside in the Plaza, being
normal and human.

But he could see how it had
come about, step by step. First
there had been pressure from
the ruling echelons, many of
whose members only main-
tained their status through
excessive production. Then,

113

much more important, there
had been the willful blindness
of the masses who wanted to
keep their cozy, familiar tread-
mills going.

He slammed down the off
button and went out to the
librarian’s desk. “Do people
want to work all the time,’’ he
said, “for the sake of work
alone?"

He immediately regretted
the question. But Burnett did
not seem to mind. '“You’ve
only stated the positive rea-
son, Mr. Hart. The negative
one could be stronger — the
fear of what they would have
to do if they did not have to
work much over a long peri-
od.”

"What would it mean?”

“Why, they would have to
start thinking! Most people
don’t mind thought if it’s con-
centrated in a narrow range.
But if they have to think in a
broad range to keep boredom
away — no, that’s too high a
price for most of them! They
avoid it when they can. And
under present circumstances
they can.” He stopped. “Of
course that’s a purely hypo-
thetical fiction I’m construct-
ing.”

Hart shook his head. “It
sounds awfully real to be
purely — ” He, too caught him-
self up. “Of course, you’re
only positing a fiction.”

Burnett started putting his
desk papers away. “I’m leav-
ing now. The Preliminary be-
gins soon. Want to come?”

114

The man’s face was stolidly
blank except for his brown
eyes which burned like a zea-
lot’s. Fascinated by them,
Hart agreed. It would be best
to return anyway. Some of
the bystanders had looked too
curiously at him when he had
left. Who would willingly leave
a Rite when it was approach-
ing its climax?

THE Plaza was now throng-
ed and the sacrificial pile
towered over a hundred feet
in the cleared center area.
Then, as the first collective
Ah! arose, a giant slagger
lumbered in from the east, the
direction prescribed for such
commencements. Long polar-
ity arms glided smoothly out
of the central mechanism and
reached the length for Total
Destruction.

“That’s the automatic set-
ting,” parents explained to
their children.

“When?” the children de-
manded eagerly.

“Any moment now.”

Then the unforeseen oc-
curred.

There was a rumbling from
inside the pile and a huge
jagged patchwork of metal
shot out, smashing both arms.
The slagger teetered, swaying
more and more violently from
side to side until it collapsed
on its side. The rumbling
grew. And then the pile, like
a mechanical cancer, ripped

ALBERT TEICHNER

the stagger apart and then
absorbed it.

The panicking crowd fell
back. Somewhere a child be-
gan crying, provoking more
hubbub. “Sabotage!” people
were crying. “Let’s get away !”

Nothing like this had ever
happened before. But Hart
knew instantly what had caus-
ed it. Some high-level servo
mechanisms had not been
thoroughly disconnected. They
had repaired their damages,
then imposed their patterns
on the material at hand.

A second slagger came rush-
ing into the square. It dis-
charged immediately ; and the
pile finally collapsed and dis-
integrated as it was supposed
to.

The crowd was too shocked
to feel the triumph it had
come for, but Hart could not
share their horror. Burnett
eyed him. “Better look indig-
nant,” he said. “They’ll be out
for blood. Somebody must
have sabotaged the setup."

“Catch the culprits !” he
shouted, joining the crowd
around hint. “Stop anti-social
acts !”

“Stop anti-social acts!”
roared Burnett ; and, in a
whisper : “Hart, let’s get out
of here.”

As they pushed their way
through tile milling crowd, a
loudspeaker boomed out : “Re-
turn home in peace. The in-
stincts of the people are good.
Healthy destruction forever!
The criminals will be tracked

down ... if they exist.”

“A terrible thing, friend,”
a woman said to them.

“Terrible, friend,” Burnett
agreed. “Smash the anti-social
elements without mercy!”
Three children were cluster-
ed together, crying. “I wanted
to set the right example for
them,” said the father to any-
one who would listen. “They'll
never get over this!”

Hart tried to console them.
“Next week is High Holy
Day,” he said, but the bawling
onlv increased.

The two men finally reached
a side avenue where the crowd
was thinner. “Come with me,”
Burnett ordered, “I want you
to meet some people.”

HE sounded as if he were
instituting military disci-
pline but Hart, still dazed,
willingly followed. “It wasn’t
such a terrible thing,” he said,
listening to the distant up-
roar. “Why don’t they shut
up!”

“They will — eventually.”
Burnett marched straight a-
head and looked fixedly in the
same direction.

“The thing could have gob-
bled up the city if there hadn’t
been a second slagger!” said
a lone passerby.

“Nonsense,” Burnett mut-
tered under his breath. “You
know that, Hart. Any self-
regulating mechanism reaches
a check limit sooner than
that.”

“It has to.”

THE JUNKMAKERS

115

They turned into a large
building and went up to the
fiftieth floor. “My apartment,”
said Burnett as he opened the
door.

There were about fifteen
people in the large living
room. They rose, smiling, to
greet their host. “Let’s save
the self - congratulations for
later,” snapped Burnett.
“These were merely our own
preliminaries. We're not out
of the woods yet. This, ladies
and gentlemen, is our newest
recruit. He has seen the light.
I have fed him basic data and
I’m sure we’re not making a
mistake with him.”

Hart was about to demand
what was going on when a
short man with eyes as in-
tense as Burnett’s proposed a
toast to “the fiasco in the
Plaza.” Everyone joined in
and he did not have to ask.

“Burnett, I don’t quite un-
derstand why I am here but
aren’t you taking a chance
with me?”

“Not at all. I've followed
your reactions since your first
visit to the library. Others
here have also — when you
were completely unaware of
being observed. The gradual
shift in viewpoint is familiar
to us. We’ve all been through
it. The really important point
is that you no longer like the
kind of world into which you
were born.”

“That’s true, but no one can
change it.”

“We are changing it, said

a thin-faced young woman.
“I work in a servo lab and —
“Miss Wright, time enough
for that later,” interrupted
Burnett. “What we must know
now, Mr. Hart, is how much
you’re willing to do for your
new-found convictions? It will
be more work than you've ever
dreamed possible.”

He felt as exhilarated as he
did in the months after High
Holy Day. “I’m down to under
ten hours labor a week. I’d do
anything for your group if I
could get more work.”
Burnett gave him a hearty
handshake of congratulation
. . . but was frowning as he
did so. “You’re doing the right
thing — for the wrong reason.
Every member of this group
could tell you why. Miss
Wright, since you feel like
talking, explain the matter.”
“Certainly. Mr. Hart, we
are eng ged in an activity of
so-called subversion for a pos-
itive reason, not merely to
avoid insufficient work load.
Your reason shows you are
still being moved by the values
that you despise. We want to
cut the work-production load
on people. ' We want them to
face the problem of leisure,
not flee it.”

“There’s a heart-warming
paradox here,” Burnett ex-
plained. “Every excess even-
tually undermines itself.
Everybody in the movement
starts by wanting to act for
their beliefs because work ap-
pears so attractive for its own

ALBERT TEICHNER

116

sake. I was that way, too, un-
til I studied the dead art of
philosophy.”

“Well — ” Hart sat down,
deeply troubled. “Look, I de-
plore destroying equipment
that is still perfectly useful
as much as any of you do. But
there is a problem. If the de-
struction were stopped there
would be so much leisure peo-
ple would rot from boredom.”

BURNETT pounced eagerly
on the argument. “Instead
they’re rotting from artificial
work. Boredom is a tempo-
rary, if recurring phenome-
non of living, not a permanent
one. If most men face the dif-
ficulty of empty time long
enough they find new prob-
lems with which to fill that
time. That’s where philosophy
showed me the way. None of
its fundamental mysteries can
ever be solved but, as you pit
yourself against them, your
experience and capacity for
being alive grows.”

“Very nice,” Hart grinned,
"wanting all men to be phi-
losophers. They never have
been.”

“You shouldn’t have
brought him here,’ growled
the short man. “He’s not one
of us. Now we have a real
mess.”

. “Johnson, I’m leader of this
group!” Burnett exploded.
“Credit me with a little un-
derstanding. All right, Hart,
what you say is true. But
why? Because most men have

THE JUNKMAKERS

always worked too hard to
achieve the fruits of curios-
ity.”

“I hate to keep being a
spoil-sport, but what does that
prove? Some men who had to
work as hard as the rest have
been interested in things be-
yond the end of their nose.”

They all groaned their dis-
approval.

“A good point, Hart, but it
doesn’t prove what you think.
It just shows that a minority
enjoy innate capacities and
environmental variations that
make the transition to phi-
losopher easier.”

“And you haven’t proven
anything about the incurious
majority.”

“This does, though: when-
ever there was a favorable
period the majority who could,
as you put it, see beyond the
ends of their noses increased.
Our era is just the opposite.
We are trapped in a vicious
circle. Those noses are usu-
ally so close to the grindstone
that men are afraid to raise
their heads. We are breaking
that circle!”

“It’s a terribly important
thing to aim for, Burnett, but
— ” He brought up another
doubt and somebody else an-
swered it immediately.

For the next half hour, as
one uncertainty was expressed
after another, everybody join-
ed in the answers until in-
exorable logic forced his sur-
render.

“All right,” he conceded, “I

117

will do anything I can — not
to make work for myself, but
to help mankind rise above
it."

'C'XCEPT for a brief, trium-
■Ijphant glance in Johnson’s
direction, Burnett gave no
further attention to what had
happened and plunged imme-
diately into practical matters.

To halt the blind worship of
work, the Rites had first to be
discredited. And to discredit
the Rites, the awe inspired by
their infallihle performance
had to be weakened. The sab-
otage of the Preliminary had
been the first local step in that
direction. There had been a
few similar, if smaller, epi-
sodes, executed by other
groups, but they had received
as little publicity as possible.

“Johnson, you pulled one so
big this time that they can’t
hide it. Twenty thousand wit-
nesses ! When it come3 to get-
ting things done you're the
best we have!"

The little man grinned. "But
you're the one who knows how
to pick recruits and organize
our concepts. This is how it
worked. I re-fed the emptied
cryotron memory box of a ro-
bot discard with patterns to
deal with anything it was like-
ly to encounter in a destruc-
tion pile. I kept the absolute-
freeze mechanism in working
order, but developed a shield
that would hide its activity
from the best pile detector.”
He spread a large tissue sche-

118

matic out on the floor and they
all gathered around it to study
the details. “Now, the impor-
tant thing was to have an ex-
ternal element that could re-
sume contact with a wider cir-
cuit, which could in turn start
meshing with the whole robot
mechanism and then through
that mechanism into the pile.
This little lever made the con-
tact at a pre-fed time.”

Miss Wright was enthusias-
tic. “That contact is half the
size of any I’ve been able to
make. It’s crucially import-
ant,” she added to Hart. “A
large contact can look sus-
picious.”

While others took minipho-
tos of the schematic. Hart
studied the contact carefully.
“I think I can reduce its size
by another fifty per cent. Al-
loys are one of my specialties
— when I get a chance to
work at them.”

“That would be ideal,” said
Burnett. “Then we could set
up many more discarded ro-
bots without risk. How long
will it take?”

“I can rough It out right
now.” He scribbled down the
necessary formulas and every-
one photographed that too.

“Maximum security is now
in effect,” announced Burnett.
“You will destroy your copies
as soon as you have trans-
ferred them to edible base
copies. At the first hint of
danger you will consume
them. Use home enlargers for
study. In no case are you to

ALBERT TEICHNER

make permanent blowups that
would be difficult to destroy
quickly.” He considered them
sternly. “Remember, you are
running a great risk. You’re
not only opposing the will of
the state but the present will
of the vast majority of citi-
zens.”

“If there are as many other
underground groups as you
indicate,” said Hart, “they
should have this information.”
“We get it to them,” an-
swered Burnett. “I’m going
on health leave from my job.”
“And what will be your ex-
cuse?” Wright demanded an-
xiously.

“Nervous shock,” smiled
their leader. “After all, I did
see today’s events in the
Plaza.”

WHEN Hart reached home
his wife was waiting for
him. “Why did you take so
long, Wendell. I was worried
sick. The radio says anti-so-
cials are turning wild servos
loose. How could human be-
ings do such a thing?”

“I was there. I saw it all
happen.” He frowned. “The
crowd was so dense I couldn’t
get away.”

“But what happened? The
ways the news was broadcast
I couldn’t understand any-
thing.”

He described the situation
in great detail and awaited
Marie's reaction. It was even
more encouraging than he had
hoped for. “I understand less

120

than before! How could any-
thing reactivate that rubble?
They put everything over five
years old into the piles, and
the stuff’s supposed to be de-
crepit already. You'd almost
think we were destroying
wealth before its time, because
if those disabled mechanisms
reactivate — ” She came to a
dead halt. “That’s madness!
Oh, I wish High Holy Day
were here already so I could
get back to work and stop this
empty thinking /”

Her honest face was more
painfully distorted than he
had ever seen it before, even
during the universal pre-Rite
doldrums. “Only a few more
days to go," he consoled.
“Don’t worry, honey. Every-
thing’s going to be all right.
Now I’d like to be alone in
the study for a while. I've
been through an exhausting
time.”

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

The last word triggered the
entry of Eric, the domestic
robot, pushing the dinner cart
ahead of him. “No food to-
night," Hart insisted. The
shining metal head nodded its
assent and the cart was wheel-
ed out.

“That’s not a very humane
thing to do,” she scolded.
“Eric’s not going to be serv-
ing many more meals — ”

“Good grief, Marie, just
leave me alone for a while,
will you?” He slammed the
study door shut, warning him-
self to display less nervous-

ALBERT TEICHNER

ness in the future as he lis-
tened to her pacing outside.
Then she went away.

The projector gave him a
good-sized wall image to con-
sider. He spent most of the
night calculating where he
could place tiny self-activators
in the “obsolescent” robots
that were to be donated by
his plant. Then he set up the
instruction tapes to make the
miniature contacts. Produc-
tion then would be a simple
job, only taking a few min-
utes, and during a working
day there were always many
periods longer than that when
he was alone on the produc-
tion floor.

But thinking the matter out
without computers was much
more difficult. Human beings
ordinarily filled their time on
a lower abstracting level.

When he unlocked the study
door in the morning he was
startled to see Marie bustling
down the corridor, pushing
the food service cart herself.
That did not make sense, espe-
cially considering last night’s
statement about Eric.

“I thought you’d want
breakfast early,” she coughed.

“You didn’t have to bother,
honey. Eric could have done
it.”

If she had been prying, the
cart might have been a prop
to take up as soon as he came
out. On the other hand, what
could she in her technical ig-
norance make of such mat-
ters anyway?

THE JUNKMAKERS

It was best not to rouse any
deeper suspicions by openly
noticing her wifely iiosiness.
At breakfast they pretended
nothing had happened, devot-
ing the time to mutually dis-
approved cousins, but all day
long he kept wondering wheth
long he kept wondering
whether ignorant knowledge
couldn’t be as dangerous as
the knowing kind.

THE next morning, after a
long sleep, he went to the
factory for the first of his
semi-weekly work periods.

He sat before a huge con-
sole, surveying scores of dials,
at the end of a machine that
was over five hundred yards
long. Today it was turning out
glass paper the color of wat-
ered blood, made only for Rit-
ual publications, packing it in
sheets and dispatching them
in automatic trucks; but the
machine could be adjusted to
everything from metal sheet-
ing to plastic felts. At the far
end sat another man, dimin-
ished by distance, busily tend-
ing more dials that could real-
ly take care of themselves.

After a while the man went
out for a break. Hart ran a
hundred yards to a section
that was not working. He
snapped it into the alloy sup-
ply and fed in the tape. In a
minute, several dozen tiny
contacts came down a chute.
He pocketed them and discon-
nected the section just before
his fellow worker reappeared.

121

The man walked down the
floor to him, looking curious.

“Anything the matter?” he
asked, hopeful for some break
in routine.

“No, just felt like a walk.”

“Know what you mean — I
feel restless too. Too bad this
plant’s only two years old.
Boy, wouldn’t she make a
great disintegration!” He
grinned, slapping a fender
affectionately.

Hart joined in the joke.
“Gives us something to look
forward to in ten years.”

“A good way to look at
things,” said the other man.

At home he locked the con-
tacts in a desk drawer. To-
morrow he would deliver most
of them to Burnett’s apart-
ment.

But the next morning an
emergency letter came from
his group leader, warning him
not to appear there. I am go-
ing completely underground.
I think they may suspect my
activities. The dispersion plan
must go into effect. You know
how to reach Johnson and
Wright and they each in turn
can get to two others. Good
luck!

He had just put the letter
in his pocket when Eric an-
nounced the arrival of a Ritu-
als Inspector.

The man had nervous close-
set eyes and seemed embar-
rassed by his need to make
such a visit. Hart took the
offensive as his best defense.
“I don’t understand this, In-

122

spector,” he protested. “You
people should be busy with
High Holy preparations. Are
you losing your taste for
work?”

“Now, now, Mr. Hart, that's
a very unkind remark. I dis-
like this nonsense as much
as anyone.” His square jaw
chewed into each word as he
opened his scanning box. “It’s
the anti-social sabotage.”

“Do you mean to say I am
under suspicion?” Marie was
now loitering in the doorway,
worse luck.

“Oh, no. Nothing so insult-
ing. This is strictly imper-
sonal. The Scanning Center
has picked apartments at com-
plete random and we’re to
make spot checks.”

The eye at one end of the
box blinked wickedly, waiting
for an information feed.
“Now, sir, if you'll pardon
me, I’ll just take the records
from one of those desk draw-
ers — any drawer — and put
them in the box.” Hart slid
open a drawer. “No, sir, I
think I’ll try the next one. It’s
regulation not to accept sug-
gestions.”

With a hand made deft by
practise he scooped out all the
sheets and tapes and put them
in the box. The scanner’s fin-
gers rapidly sorted them past
the eye. Hart exhaled, reliev-
ed that an innocuous drawer
had been selected, and the in-
spector handed back the ma-
terial to him. “Well, Inspector,
that’s that.”

ALBERT TEICHNER

“Not quite.” The Inspector
selected another drawer at the
other end of the desk and
dumped everything before the
scanner. His examination was
speeding up and that was not
good; he would have time to
take more sample readings.

“Now if you’ll empty your
left pocket — ”

H, this is too much!”
Vr Marie exploded. “My
husband struggles all night
on secret work, studying to
find ways to stop the anti-
socials, and you treat him like
one of them!”

“You’re working on the
problem?” the Inspector said
respectfully. “What are you
doing?”

Frying pan to fire. Hart
preferred the pan and pulled
open a drawer. “It’s too com-
plicated, too much time need-
ed to explain!”

The Inspector glanced at his
watch. “I’m falling behind
schedule.” He closed up his
box. “Sorry, but I have to
leave. Heavy time sheet to-
day.”

As soon as he was gone,
Hart breathed easier. Nothing
incriminating would be fed
into the Central Scanner.

Marie became apologetic.
"I'm sorry I said it, Wendell,
but I couldn’t keep quiet. All
I did last night was peek in
once or twice.”

He shrugged. “I’m just on
a minor project.”

“Every bit counts.” She

THE JUNKMAKERS

shook her head. “Only you
have to wonder — I mean,
don’t think I’m treasoning,
but while I was shopping an
hour ago a lot of women said
you have to think — how come
all that obsolescent junk could
work so well, after being thor-
oughly wrecked, too? You al-
most wonder whether some of
it was too good for disinte-
gration.”

Wendell pretended to be
shocked. “Just a fluke of cir-
cumstance. If something like
that happened again you'd be
right to wonder. But it could
not ever happen again.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Wen-
dell. None of the women at-
tacked anything. It was more
like what you just said. They
said if it happened again, then
you’d have to wonder. But of
course it couldn’t happen
again.”

How well the tables had
turned! Not only had Marie’s
ignorant knowledge proven
helpful but she had now given
him a positive idea also.

When he met Wright and
Johnson at the latter’s apart-
ment that evening he explain-
ed it to them. “We can propa-
gate ‘dangerous’ thoughts and
yet appear completely loyal.
We can set up the reaction to
next High Holy Day.”

“How?” demanded Johnson.
“That’s having your cake and
eating it.”

“Nothing’s impossible in the
human mind,” Wright said.
“Let's listen.”

123

“Here's the point. Wher-
ever you go there will be peo-
ple tsk-tsking about the Pre-
liminary fiasco. Just reassure
them, say it meant nothing at
all by itself. If it ever hap-
pened again, then there would
be room for doubt but, of
course, it could not happen
again!”

Wright smiled. “That's al-
most feminine in its subtlety."

He smiled back. “My wife
inspired it. Don’t get nervous
— it was unconscious, sheerly
by acident."

“Whatever the cause, it’s
the perfect result,” Johnson
conceded. “We’ll spread it
through the net.”

“Along with this, I hope.”
Wendell dumped the contacts
on a table top. “It’s the small-
est size possible. A lot should
get by unnoticed. Find cell
members who can set up cry-
otrons with a wide range of
instructions to cope with any-
thing in the piles. Some weird-
ly alive concoctions of ‘ob-
solescent’ parts ought to re-
sult.”

“Some day the world’s go-
ing to know what you’ve done
for it,” said Johnson solemnly.

“That could happen too
soon!” Miss Wright’s face,
honest and open in its horse-
like length, broke into a wide
grin.

“Amen,” said Hart, adding
the private hope that Marie,
blessed with superior looks,
might be able to show as much
superior wisdom some day.

124

T HE hope was not immedi-
ately fulfilled. When he
reached home Marie was in a
tizzy of excitement. “You’re
just in time, darling. They just
caught three subversives. One
of them was a woman,” she
added as this were compound-
ing an improbability with an
impossibility. “They're going
to show them.”

He gripped his belt tightly.
“A woman?”

“That’s right. There she is
now.”

A uniformed officer was
gently helping a pale little old
woman sit down before the
camera, as if she were more
an object of pity than of fear.
Hart relaxed.

“ — caught red-handed with
the incriminating papers,”
shouted an offstage announc-
er. “Handbills asserting ob-
jects declared obsolescent
could actually last indefinite-
ly!”

“What do you have to say
for yourself?” the officer ask-
ed gently. “You must realize,
of course, that such irreligious
behavior precludes your mov-
ing in general society for a
long time to come.”

“I don’t know what came
over me,” she sobbed -in a
tired voice. “Curiosity. Yes,
curiosity, that’s what it was.
I saw these sheets of paper
in the street and they said we
should stop working so hard
at compulsory tasks and start
working to expand our own
interests and personalities.”

ALBERT TEICHNER

“Self - contradictory non-
sense!” said the voice.

“Yes, I know that. But it
made me curious and I took it
home to read, and it said our
compulsory tasks were artifi-
cially manufactured and, if
you didn’t believe that, look at
the pile that reactivated itself
the other day.” She stopped,
reorganizing her thoughts.
“Of course, though, that thing
in the Plaza was unique, you
know. I don't think it could
mean a thing . . . unless it
happened a few times. And
the fact is it won’t ever hap-
pen again.”

“Well, that much makes
very good sense,” said Marie.
“You said the same thing,
Wendell. I don't think that
poor woman knew what she
was doing — just a dupe for
subversive propaganda.”

“ — a dupe for subversive
propaganda,” the announcer
was saying.

“See, exactly what I said.”

“Yes. dear.”

How swiftly the decentral-
ized underground was work-
ing! Hart could not tell wheth-
er the old woman was an ac-
tive member or just a passive
responder, but it did not mat-
ter. She was now spreading
the seeds for future doubt
across the land.

Two old men were brought
in and they mumbled the same
disconnected story as their
sister.

“We have intensively in-
terrogated these prisoners,”

THE JUNKMAKERS

boomed the announcer, “and
know there is nothing more
to the rumored anti-social plot
than this stupid chatter. Re-
main vigilant and you have
nothing to fear!”

“You are sentenced to five
years isolation from general
society,” said the officer, in a
voice dulcet enough to sell ad-
vance orders for replacement
products that had not yet been
made. “Our intention is to
protect you from bad influ-
ences. Our hope is that others
will take your lesson to heart.”
“God bless you,” said the
woman and her brothers join-
ed in effusive thanks.

“Makes you proud to be a
human being,” Marie said.
“I was getting some stupid
doubts myself, dear. I must
admit it. But that’s all past.
I can hardly wait for the
Highest Holy Day.”

“Neither can I,” sighed her
husband.

THE next day at noon Eric
came to him, functioning
on the final set of servo in-
structions that had been in-
stalled in him at the factory
of his birth eight years be-
fore. He shook hands with the
two of them and said: “Now
I am prepared for death.”
Marie was tearful. “I will
miss you, Eric. If you were
only under five years old your
span could be extended.”
“Everything that happens

125

is right,” Eric said impas-
sively.

He clambered on to the
operation table, instinctively
knowing which flat surface
was for him, and, breaking all
his major circuits, gave up the
ghost that only man could re-
store to him.

Hart found his wife’s grief
easy to bear. The day after
tomorrow she would join in
the general exultation of High
Holy Day, with Eric well for-
gotten. He methodically began
smashing the surface of the
limbs and torso; the greater
the visible damage, the great-
er the honor redounding to
the sacrifice donor. “This will
be our gift to the general
pile,” he said.

“I thought we could keep
him for our garden sacrifice,”
Marie protested meekly. “Most
people do.”

“But the other way is the
greater sacrifice.”

There was no reply, because
she knew he spoke for the
deeper, more moving custom.
But suddenly he began to act
depressed himself. “I know
we say it every ten years, but
Eric was really the best com-
panion we ever had.” He ges-
tured toward the table. “I
want to sit here with him for
a while — alone.”

“That’s carrying things too
far, Wendell. A little grief is
proper — but this much is
actually morbid.”

“It’s all within my rights.”
She tossed her head petu-

126

lantly. “Well, I’ve done my
‘'are. I can’t stand any more.
It makes a person think and
get depressed. I don’t care
what you’re going to do. I’m
going out to enjoy a Prelimi-
nary.”

“Can’t blame you for that,”
he nodded.

When she had gone he start-
ed to work on new instruction
tapes for activating the servo-
cryotron. Nothing could be
surrendered to chance. Every
possible circumstance in the
pile had to be anticipated.
There had to be instructions
for action if Eric was crushed
below fifty feet of metal, for
assembling any kind of scram-
bled wiring, for adapting all
types of parts in its immedi-
ate surroundings, for using
these parts to absorb parts
further away and for timing
the operation to the start of
the Highest Rite.

Some tapes had been pre-
pared earlier, so it was pos-
sible to put everything in the
cryotron box before Marie re-
turned, as well as to attach
the tiny contact that would
reach out from the box until
it reached its first external
scrap of wire or metal.

“You poor darling,” she
pouted. “You missed the most
wonderful thing ! They demol-
ished a whole thirty-story
building !”

His blood, atavistically ef-
fected, pulsed faster until his
new creed came to grips with
his old emotions. “They usu-

ALBERT TEICHNER

ally don’t bother with build-
ings for the Rites.”

“I know — that’s what was
so wonderful! The State has
decided to make this one the
biggest Day of all time. We’ll
have enough work to fill the
whole ten years! Everybody
was so happy.”

“I'm sure they were.” He
caught himself in mid-sar-
casm and said, “I’m sorry I
missed it.”

“And I'm sorry I’ve been
so selfishly self-centered.” She
frowned. “I forgot about it,
but there were people in the
crowd boasting they had been
assigned to fight anti-social
movements. I had to boast
back that my husband had
been honored too.”

He tensed. “Oh? What did
they say to that?”

“Frankly, they laughed.”
“I should think so. The Cen-
tral Scanner didn’t pick up
anything except a lot of inef-
fective propaganda. The sab-
otage business was all hy-
steria.”

“That’s just what they said
— the assignments were an
empty honor.” She coldly con-
sidered Eric. “I want to wreck
him too.”

“I’ve smashed the insides,”
he said. “You’d better just
work the surface.”

“That’s all I want to do,”
she answered, starting to
scratch traditional marks all
over the dead robot. It gave
her a full afternoon of happy,
busy labor.

THE JUNKMAKERS

THE next day a large open
truck came around and the
street echoed to the appeal for
contributions. Festival spirit
was running high everywhere
and when the neighborhood
crowd saw the young robot
porters carry Eric out there
was a loud cheer of apprecia-
tion.

“My husband decided on
a major contribution right
away,” Marie announced to
them.

“It’s the least we could do,”
he said modestly.

Many onlookers, swept
away by their example, rush-
ed indoors to bring out addi-
tional items of sacrifice. But
only two others gave up their
robots. The rest clung to them
for private Holy Night cere-
monies. Soon Eric disappeared
under the renewed deluge of
egg-beaters and washers.

“The best collection I have
seen today,” said the inspector
accompanying the truck. “You
people are to be congratulated
for your exceptional patrio-
tism.”

“Destroy!” they shouted
back joyously. "Make work!”
At dawn the Central Plaza
was already crowded and new
hordes kept pouring in from
outlying areas. Wendell and
his wife had been among the
first to arrive. They waited,
impatient in their separate
ways, on the borderline five
hundred yards from the ten-
story pyre.

Martial music roared from

127

loudspeakers, interrupted by
tiie mellifluous boom of a mer-
chandising announcer: “New
product! Better models! One
hundred years of High Holy
Days! New! New! NEW!”
“Destroy !” came the return-
ing shout. “Make work ! Work !
Work!”

All the sounds echoed back
and forth until baffled away
by the open area across the
Plaza, where one large struc-
ture had already been destroy-
ed. Three others were slated
for collapse today.

“The biggest Holy Day
ever,” a restless old woman
said to Marie. “I’ve seen all
nine of them.”

“Eric’s in there,” Marie
chatted back, superficially sad,
deeply happy.

“Who?”

“Our house robot.”
“Imagine that! Did you
hear that?” People gathered
round them and cheered. The
good-natured jostling contin-
ued until someone said : “Five
minutes to go!”

Wendell checked his watch.
Somewhere in the pile at least
one element was coming to
life, a metal arm reaching out
for brother metal to engulf in
its cybernetic sweep.

“They’re coming!” A line
of six shiny new slaggers
came rumbling into the open
with military precision. They
moved along slowly, prolong-
ing the pleasures of anticipa-
tion, then broke rank, each
seeking its assigned point

128

around the pile of appliances
gathered for destruction.

“The latest improved mod-
els,” said the loudspeakers.
“They will first perform fif-
teen minutes of automatic ma-
neuvers.” The military music
resumed and each slagger
turned, as if circling a coin, in
clanking rhythm to it.

“The three hundred and six-
ty degree turn. Next, making
a box on the Plaza floor . . .”
The voice stopped, appalled.

AN avalanche of metal slid
down one side of the pile
and the crowd gasped. The
downward movement viscous-
ly slowed ; then the metal, sud-
denly alive with the capacity
to defy gravity, circled up-
ward. Jagged limbs started
flailing about.

“Disintegrator attack!”
screamed the loudspeakers.
“Attack!”

The maneuvers stopped. For
one brief moment prior to
changeover the Plaza was
dead still, except for the deaf-
ening rumble in the pile. The
slaggers broke the spell, rush-
ing full speed toward the pile,
evaporator beams working.

One by one they faltered
and were sucked into the de-
structive pyre.

The crowd fell further back.
The whole pile came alive like
a mineral octupus. Then the
squirming thing collapsed, ev-
ery makeshift circuit irrepar-
ably broken and dead. Every-
thing had been happening too

ALBERT TEICHNER

fast for any pronounced re-
action to accompany it; but
now the world went crazy.

“Stand firm!” pleaded the
loudspeakers. “We will get re-
inforcements as soon as cele-
brations are finished else-
where.”

A barrage of enormous boos
came from the disintegrating
mob. “Never again! Fakes!
It's finished, done for!”
“Stand firm!”

But the breakup down side
avenues continued. “I don’t
understand,” Marie shudder-
ed. “Everything’s crazy. We’ve
been deceived, Wendell. Who’s
been deceiving us?”

“Nobody — unless it’s our-
selves.”

“I don't understand that
either.” Saucer-eyed she
watched a great clump of dis-
gruntled people push past. “I
have to think!”

Suddenly, as they came
around a corner, they were
facing Burnett.

Hart tried to disregard him
but the group leader would
have none of that. He rushed
up to Hart. “Good to see a
friendly face. Shocking devel-
opments !” His face was grim,
but tiny wrinkles at the cor-
ners of his eyes betrayed an
amusement that could only be
discovered by those who look-
ed for it.

“Mr. Burnett,” he explained
to Marie. “A librarian at the
main building. Mr. Burnett,
my wife Marie.”

“I am most happy to meet

THE JUNKMAKERS

you, Mrs. Hart. Have you
heard the latest?”

“No, Mr. Burnett.”

“The same tilings have been
happening everywhere! They
announced it on the radio and
they’re saying it’s due to anti-
social elements. Shocking!"

She shook her head stub-
bornly. “I don’t know what to
think. Maybe we shouldn’t be
shocked, maybe we should be.
I just don’t know, Mr. Bur-
nett. I came to enjoy myself
and look how it’s ended.” She
bravely held back a sob. “May-
be we’d have been better off if
we’ve never heard about High
Holy Days!”

Burnett looked about with
feigned apprehension. “You
have to be careful what you
say. The government says
there’s even talk — subver-
sive handbills — about trying
to rehabilitate some of the
stuff in the piles.”

“The government ought to
keep quiet!” she exploded.
“They said this couldn’t hap-
pen. You can’t believe any-
thing they say any more. The
people decide and the govern-
ment will have to listen, that's
what I say! And I'm a pretty
typical person, not one of your
intellectual kind. No criticism
of present company intended.”
“None taken, Mrs. Hart.
Our human future,” said Bur-
nett, exchanging a grin with
his aide, “remains, as it al-
ways has really been. Inter-
esting— to say the least!”

END

129

HUE AND CRY

WELL, here we are, month
after month trying to do
the best we can in the way
of producing an IF you’ll like,
and it’s sometimes like drop-
ping words down a well. We
know you’re out there because
somebody buys all those mag-
azines! But, specifically, who
are you?

One of you is Lawrence
Crilly of Elizabeth, New Jer-
sey, who writes:

Is is too much to ask for a
letter-col ? It'd convince the fans
that you’re actually trying to
please them — while capturing
the attention of casual readers —
and the promise of egoboo if
their names appeared in print
would compel a large number of
readers to comment on the stor-
ies, who normally do not — my-
self included. You ought to give
this serious consideration.

We did. Sounds like a good
deal . . . so . . . consider this
the letter-col; and if it’s brief
this time, it’s because we don’t
have much more that we can
publish.

But you can remedy that!
Just get down to your type-
writers !

And while you’re writing,
check us out on a couple of
basic assumptions we’re mak-
ing. For instance:

Assumption Number One :
There’s space in the science

fiction field . . . somewhere be-
tween the childish adventure
and the Prophets of Doom . . .
for a magazine that’ll give
the reader stories to enjoy —
as well as something to think
about.

We think, in other words,
that although science-fiction
has come a long way, there is
still a lot that the long-time
“Great Names” of science
fiction have to give us. (For
which reason we’re proud to
welcome back, in near-future
issues, the likes of Lester del
Rey, E. E. “Skylark” Smith
and a dozen more all-time
favorites.) What we aim for
in IF is all the color of the
old days, and all the stimula-
tion of the new.

Assumption Number Two :
The readers are entitled to a
share in making the decisions.
Accordingly, we’ll try to do
what you want — asking only
that you tell us what it is !

Assumption Number Three :
That “progress” is sometimes
spelled M-I-S-T-A-K-E. We’ll
try to do what you want —
but if we goof, tell us so!

As a starter, next issue will
have a slightly different for-
mat— a more compact type
and therefore, we hope, more
story-content. We’ll be look-
ing forward to knowing what
you think of that — and every-
thing else ! END

130

mr ^Cuinr iHrrr

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